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THE 



COMPLETE PROSE ¥ORKS 



OF 



MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, ESQ. 



C O ]\I P R I S I N G 
THE CROCK OF GOLD, AN AUTHOR'S MND, 

THE TWINS, HEART, 

PR0B.y3ILITIES, ETC. 



REVISED EXPRESSLY FOR THIS EDITION BY W. C. ARMSTRONG 



HARTFORD: 
PUBT.TSHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON 

185:^ 



-^ % 



-C6 



i-^t 



PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. 



Mr. Tupper has achieved a popularity foi* his works, which 
has rarely been enjoyed by any one at so early a period of life : 
he being now only between thirty-five and forty years of age. 
Where all are so intrinsically valuable, it is difficult to determine 
which particular work has contributed most to his rapid and 
enviable advancement ; yet, were an award indispensable, we 
should feel constrained to make it in favour of his ^ Provef^ial 
Philosophy." It is one of those unique productions which com- 
mends itself to all classes of readers, and from the perusal of 
which all cannot but derive substantial means of improvement. 
Familiar truths are so cogently treated therein, as to leave an 
indellible impression upon the mind, which could not, perhaps, 
have been so thoroughly made in any other manner; and the 
"thoughts and arguments" maybe perused and reperused with 
an advantage but few other writings are capable of yielding. 

The rapid and extensive sale of several editions, issued in 
other places — some of them of rather an indifferent character, as 
regards mechanical execution — and the increasing demand still 
manifested for them, has induced the present publishers to collect 
the entire \vorks of Mr. Tupper, and to stereotype them in a 
style worthy of their excellence. Each work has been thoroughlv 
revised, and the errors which disfigure some other editions have 
been carefully corrected — an advantage readily appreciable bv 
those who discriminate in their selections for the library or the 
centre-table. 



CONTENTS. 



THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



CHAP. PAGE. 

1. The Labourer; and his Dawning 

Discontent .... 

2. Tiie Family ; the Home ; and 

more Rtpinings 

3. The Contract .... 

4. The Lost Theft . 
5.. The Inquest .... 

6. The Bailiff; and a Bitter Trial 

7. Wrongs and Ruin 

8. The Covetous Dream . 

9. The Poachi-r .... 

10. Ben Burke's Strange Adventure 

11. Sleep 

12. Love 

13. The Discovery 

14. Jonathan's Store . 

15. Another Discovery, and the Ear- 

nest of Good Things 

16. How the Home was blessed 

thereby . . . . G2 

17. Care 65 

18. Investment .... 68 

19. Calumny 72 

20. The Bailiff's Visit . . 74 

21. The Capture . . . .77 

22. The Aunt and her Nephew . 80 

23. Schemes 83 

24. The Devil's Counsel . . 87 

25. The Ambuscade ... 89 



11 

14 
17 
21 
23 
27 
32 
35 
38 
41 
45 
48 
52 
56 

58 



CHAP. pxoE. 

26. Preliminaries ... 92 

27. Robbery 95 

28. Murder .... 96 

29. The Reward . . . .97 

30. Second Thoughts . . .100 

31. Maminon ; and Contentment . 102 

32. Next Morning . . .104 

33. The Alarm . . . .106 

34. Doubts . . . . 108 

35. Fears 109 

36. Prison Comforts . . .111 

37. Good Counsel .... 113 

38. Experience . . . .114 

39. Jonathan's Troth . . .115 

40. Suspicions .... 118 

41. Grace's Alternative . . . 119 

42. The Dismissal . . .152 

43. Simon alone .... 124 

44. The Trial .... 127 

45. Roger's Defence . . .129 

46. The Witness . . .130 

47. Mr. Sharp's Advocacy . . 133 

48. Sentence and Death . . 140 

49. Righteous Mammon . . 143 

50. The Crock a Blessing . . 144 

51. Popularity .... 147 

52. Roger at the Swan . . 149 

53. Roger's Triumph . . .151 

54. Sir John's Parting Speech . 152 



6 



CONTENTS. 



THE TWINS. 



CHAP. 


PAGE. 


CHAP. 


PAGE. 


1. 


Place; Time; Circumstance 


157 


16. 


How Charles Fared 


204 


2. 


The Heroes 


161 


17. 


The General's Return . 


. 207 


3. 


The Arrival . 


. 166 


18. 


Intercalary . 


211 


4. 


The General and his Ward, 


1G8 


19. 


Julian's Departure . 


. 213 


5. 


Jealousy 


. 172 


20. 


Knlightenment 


215 


G. 


The Confidante . 


174 


21. 


Charles at Madras . 


. 2i6 


7. 


The Course of True Love 


. 177 


22. 


Revelations, 


219 


8. 


The Mystery 


180 


23. 


Convalescence 


. 222 


9. 


How to clear it up . 


. 182 


24. 


Charles Delayed . 


224 


10. 


Aunt Green's Legacy . 


184 


25. 


Trials .... 


. 229 


11. 


Preparations, and Departure 


. 188 


26. 


Julian 


231 


12. 


The Escape 


192 


27. 


Charles's Return, &c. 


. 233 


13. 


News of Charles . 


. 196 


28. 


Julian turns up, &,c. . 


237 


14. 


The Tete-a-Tete 


199 


29. 


The old Scotch Nurse goes 


home 23b 


15. 


Satisfaction 


. 202 


30. 


Final .... 


241 



HEART. 



CHAP. PACK. 

1. Wherein two Anxious Parents 

hold a Colloquy . . . 245 

2. How the Daughter has a Heart ; 

and , what is commoner, a Lover 249 

3. Paternal Amiabilities . . 252 

4. Excusatory .... 257 

5. Wherein a well-meaning Mother 

acts very foolishly . . 2G0 

6. Pleasant Brother John . 263 

7. Providence sees fit to help Villany 268 

8. The Rogue's Triumph . 273 

9. False-Witness Kills a Mother, 

and would willingly Starve a 
Sister 278 



CHAP. PA OR. 

10. How to Help one's self . 283 
n. Fraud cuts his fingers with his 

own Edged Tools . . 289 

12. Heart's-Core ... 293 

13. Hope's Birth to Innocence, and 

Hope's Death to Fraud . 296 

14. Probable Reconciliation . 298 

15. The Father finds his Heart for ever 302 

16. A Word about Originality, and 

Mourning . . . 30G 

17. The House of Feasting . . 308 

18. The End of the Heartless . 312 

19. Wherein matters are concluded 320 



CONTENTS. 



AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 



SUBJECTS. PAGE. 

The Author's Mind; a ramble . 331 
Nero, a tragedy . . . 353 
Opium, a history . . . .361 
Charlotte Clopton, a novel . . 364 
The Marvellous, a hand-book 371 
Psychotherion, an argument . 376 
The Confessional, a tale . . 377 
The Prior of Marrick, an auto- 
biography .... 379 
The Seven Churches, a dissertation 384 
Revision, an essay . . . 386 
Homely Expositions, a compilation 386 
Lay Sermons, a contribution . . 386 
Scriptural Physics, a treatise . 387 
Heathenism, an apology . . 387 
Biblical Similes, an investigation 389 
Home, an epic .... 390 
Grecian Sayings, a series . . 398 



SUBJECTS. PiGB. 

Heptalogia, a collection . . 400 

Alfred, an oratorio . . . 403 

Alfred's Life, a translation . . 406 
National Memorials, a proposal . 408 

Politics, a manual . . .411 

Woman, a subject . . . 414 

False Steps, a pamphlet . . 415 

King's Evidence, a satire, . . 417 

Poetics, a melange . . . 422 

Humoristics, a medley . . 423 

Journals, a decade . . . 426 

Lay Hints, an appeal . . 427 

Anti-Xurion, a crusade . . . 431 

The Squire, a portraiture . . 434 
The Author's Tribunal, an orntion 437 

Zoilomastrix, a title . . . 443 

Epilogue, a conclusion . . . 443 

Appendix, an after-thought . 445 



PROBABILITIES. 



SUBJECTS. 

An Aid to Faith . 

God and his Attributes 

The Triunity 

The Godhead Visible 

The Origin of Evil 

Cosmogony 

Adam . 

The Fall . 

The Flood . 

Noah 



PAeE. 


SUBJECTS. 


459 


Babe! . 


466 


Job . 


472 


Joshua 


476 


The Incarnation 


480 


Mahometanism 


485 


Romanism 


488 


The Bible . 


490 


Heaven and Hell 


493 


An Offer . 


495 


Conclusion 



PAGE. 

497 
499 
504 
50G 
509 
511 
517 
.'■>21 
525 
526 



THE 



CROCK or GOLD; 



A HGRAL NOVEL, 



BY 

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, ESQ., M. A., 



AUTHOH OF 



n 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY." 



HARTFORD: 
SILAS ANDRUS AND SON, 

1853. 



THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE LABOUEER; AXD HIS DAWNING DISCONTENT. 

Roger Acton woke at five. It was a raw March inorninn:, still dai-k, 
and bitterly cold, while at gusty intervals the rain beat in against the 
crazy cottage-window. Nevertheless, from his poor pallet he must up 
and rouse himself, for it will be open weather by sunrise, and his work 
lies two miles off; Master Jennings is not the man to show him favour 
if he be late, and Roger cannot afford to lose an hour: so he shook off 
the luxury of sleep, and rose again to toil with weary effort. 

" Honest Roger," as the neighbours called him, was a fair specimen 
of a class which has been Britain's boast for ages, and may be still 
again, in measure, but at present that glory appears to be departing : 
a class much neglected, much enduring; thoroughly English — ^just, 
industrious, and patient ; true to the altar, and loyal to the throne ; 
though haply shaken somewhat now from both those noble faiths — 
warped in their principles, and blunted in their feelings, by lying doc- 
trines and harsh economies ; a class — I hate the cold cant term — a race 
of honourable men, full of cares, pains, privations — but of pleasures 
next to none ; whose life at its most prosperous estate is labour, and in 
death we count him happy who did not die a pauper. Through them, 
serfs of the soil, the earth yields indeed her increase, but it is for others; 
from the fields of plenty they glean a scanty pittance, and fill the barns 
to bursting, while their children cry for bread. Not that Roger for his 
part often wanted work ; he was the best hand in the parish, and had 
earned of his employers long ago the name of Steady Acton ; but the 
fair wages for a fair day's labour were quite another thing, and the times 
went very hard for him and his. A man himself may starve, while hit 



12 



THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



industry makes others fat: and a liberal landlord all the winter through 
may keep his labourers in work, while a crafty, overbearing bailiff 
mulcts them in their wages. 

For the outward man, Acton stood about five feet ten, a gaunt, spare, 
and sinewy figure, slightly bent ; his head sprinkled with gray ; his face 
marked with those rigid lines, which tell, if not of positive fiimine, at 
least of too much toil on far too little food ; in his eye, patience and 
good temper ; in his carriage, a mixture of the sturdy bearing, necessary 
to the habitual exercise of great muscular strength, together with that 
gait of humility — almost humiliation — which is the seal of oppression 
upon poverty. He might be about forty, or from that to fifty, for hun- 
ger, toil, and weather had used him the roughest; while, for all beside, 
tiie patched and well-worn smock, the heavily-clouted high-laced boots, 
a dingy worsted neck-tie, and an old felt hat, complete the picture 
of externals. 

But, for the matter of character within, Roger is quite another man. 
If his rank in tliis world is the lowest, many potentates may envy him 
liis state elsewhere. His heart is as soft, as his hand is horny; with 
t!io wandering gipsy or the tramping beggar, thrust aside, perhaps 
di servcdly, as impudent impostors from the rich man's gate, has he 
oftcn-times shared his noon-day morsel : upright and sincere himself, he 
thinks as well of others : he scarcely ever heard the Gospels read in 
church, specially about Eastertide, but the tears would trickle down his 
weather-beaten face : he loves children — his neighbour's little ones as 
well as his own : he will serve any one for goodness' sake without 
reward or thanks, and is kind to the poor dumb cattle : he takes quite a 
pride in his little rod or two of garden, and is early and late at it, both 
before and after the daily sum of labour: he picks up a bit of knowl- 
edge here and there, and somehow has contrived to amass a fund of 
information for which kw would give him credit from his con)mon looks; 
and he joins to that stock of facts a natural shrewdness to use his knowl- 
edge wisely. Though with little of what is called sentiment, or poetry, 
or fancy in his mind (for harsh was the teaching of his childhood, and 
meagre the occasions of self-culture ever since), the beauty of creation 
is by no means lost upon him, and he notices at times its wisdom too. 
With a fixed habit of manly piety ever on his lips and ever in his heart, 
he recognises Providence in all things, just, and wise, and good. More 
than so; simply as a little child who endures the school-hour for the 
prospect of his play-time, Roger Acton bears up with noble meekness 



THE LABOURER. 



13 



against present suffering, knowing that his work and trials and troubles 
are only for a little while, but his rest and his reward remain ^ long here- 
after. vHe never questioned this; he knew right well Who had earned 
it for him; and he lived grateful and obedient, filling up the duties of 
his humble station. This was his faith, and his works followed it. He 
believed that God had placed him in his lot, to be a labourer, and till 
God's earth, and, when his work is done, to be sent on better service in 
some happier sphere : the where, or the how, did not puzzle him, any more 
than divers other enigmatical whys and wherefores of his present state; 
lie only knew this, that it would all come right at last :^ and, barring sin 
(which he didn't comprehend), somehow all was right at present. What 
if poverty pinched him? he was a great heir still ; what if oppression 
bruised him? it would soon be over. He trusted to his Pilot, like the 
landsman in a storm ; to his Father, as an infant in the dark. For guilt, 
lie had a Saviour, and he thought of him in penitence; for trouble, a 
Guardian, and he looked to him in peace; and as for toil, back-breaking 
toil, there was another Master whom lie served with spade, and mattock, 
and a thankful hearf, while he only seemed to be working for the land-, 
lord or his bailiff. 

Such a man then had been Roger Acton from his youth up till now, 
or, if sadness must be told, nearly until now; for, to speak truth, his 
heart at times would fail him, and of late he had been bitter in repinings 
and complaint. For a day or two, in particular, he had murmured 
loudly. It was hard, very hard, that an honest, industrious man, as he 
was, should so scantily pick a living out of this rich earth : after all 
said, let the parson preach as he will, it's a fine thing to have money, 
and that his reverence knows right well, or he wouldn't look so closely 
for his dues. [N. B. Poor Mr. Evans was struggling as well as he 
could to bring up six children, on a hundred and twenty pounds per 
annum.] Roger, too, was getting on in years, with a blacker prospect 
for the future than when he first stood behind a plough-tail. Then 
there were many wants unsatisfied, which a bit of gold might buy; and 
his wife teased him to be doing something better. Thus was it come at 
length to pass, that, although he had endured so many years, he now 
got discontented at his penury ; — what human heart can blame him ? — 
and with murmurings came doubt; with doubt of Providence, desire of 
lucre; so the sunshine of religion faded from his path; — what mortal 
mind can wonder? 

2 



14 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE FAMILY; THE HOM; AND MORE REPININGS. 

Now, if Malthus and Martineau be verily the pundits that men think 
them, Roger had twice in his life done a very foolish thing: he had 
binned against society, statistics, and common sense, by a two-fold mar- 
riage. The wife of his youth (I am afraid he married early) had once 
been kitchen-maid at the Hall ; but the sudden change from living lux- 
uriously in a great house, to the griping poverty of a cotter's hovel, had 
cluinged, in three short years, the buxom country girl into an emaciated 
shadow of her former self, and the sorrowing husband buried her in her 
second child-bed. The powers of the parish clapped their hands ; polit- 
ical economy was glad ; prudence chuckled ; and a coarse-featured 
fanner (he meant no ill), who occasionally had given Roger work, 
heartlessly bade him be thankful that his cares were the fewer and his 
incumbrance was removed; "Ay, and Heaven take the babies also to 
itself," the Herodian added. But Acton's heart was broken ! scarcely 
could he lift up his head ; and his work, though sturdy as before, was 
more mechanical, less high-motived : and many a year of dreary widow- 
hood he mourned a loss all the greater, though any thing but bitterer, 
for the infants .so left motherless. To these, now grown into a strapping 
youth and a bright-eyed graceful girl, had he been the tenderest of 
nurses, and well supplied the place of her whom they had lost. Neigh- 
bours would have helped him gladly — sometimes did; and many was 
the hinted offer (disinterested enough, too, for in that match penury 
must have been the settlelnent, and starvation the dower), of giving 
them a mother's kindly care ; but Roger could not quite so soon forget 
the dead: so he would carry his darlings ^vith him to his work, and feed 
them with his own hard hands ; the farmers winked at it, and never said 
a word against the tiny trespassers ; their wives and daughters loved the 
little dears, bringing them milk and possets; and holy angels from on 
high may liave oft-times hovered about this rude nurse, tending his 
soft innocents a-field, and have wept over the poor widower and his 
orphans, tears of hnppy sorrow and benevolent affection. Yea, many a 
good angel has shed blessings on their heads ! 

Within the last three years, and sixteen from the date of his first 
great grief, Roger had again got married. His daughter was growing 



THE HOME. 15 

into early womanhood, and his son gave him trouble at times, and the 
cottage wanted a ruling hand over it when he was absent, and rheuma- 
tism now and then bade him look out for a nurse before old age, and 
Mary Alder was a notable middle-aged careful sort of soul, and so she 
became Mary Acton. All went on pretty well, until Mrs. Acton began to 
have certain little ones of her own ; and then the step-mother would break 
out (a contingency poor Roger hadn't thought of), separate interests 
crept in, and her own children fared before the others ; so it came to 
pass that, however truly there was a ruling hand at home, and however 
well the rheumatism got nursed (for Mary was a good wife in the 
main), the grown-up son and daughter felt themselves a little jostled out. 
Grace, gentle and submissive, found all her comforts shrunk within the 
space of her father and her Bible ; Thomas, self-willed and open-hearted, 
sought his pleasure any where but at home, and was like to be taking 
to wrong courses through domestic bickering : Grace had the dangerous 
poi'tion, beauty, added to her lowly lot, and attracted more admiration 
than her father wished, or she could understand ; while the frank and 
bold spirit of Thomas Acton exposed him to the perilous friendship of 
Ben Burke the poacher, and divers other questionable characters. 

Of these elements, then, are our labourer and his family composed ; 
and before Roger Acton goes abroad at earliest streak of dawn, we 
will take a casual peep within his dwelling. It consists of four bare 
rubble walls, enclosing a grouted floor, worn unevenly, and here and 
there in holes, and puddly. There were but two rooms in the tenement, 
one on the ground, and one over-head ; which latter is with no small 
difficulty got at by scaling a ladder-like stair-case that fronts the cottage- 
door. This upper chamber, the common dormitory, for all but Thomas, 
who sleeps down stairs, has a thin partition at one end of it, to screen off 
the humble truckle-bed where Grace Acton forgets by night the troubles 
of the day ; and the remainder of the little apartment, sordid enough, 
and overhung with the rough thatch, black with cobweb, serves for the 
father and mother with their recent nursery. Each room has its shat- 
tery casement, to let in through linchened panes, the doubtful light of 
summer, and the much more indubitable wind, and rain, and frost of 
wintrv nio-hts. A few articles of crockery and some burnished tins 
decorate the shelves of the lower apartment; which used to be much 
tidier before the children came, and trimmer still when Grace was sole 
manager: in a doorless clipboard are apparent sundry coarse edibles, 
as the half of a huge unshapely home-made loaf, some white country 



10 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

cheese, a mass of lumpy pudding, and so forth ; beside it, on the win- 
dow-sill, is better bread, a well-thumbed Bible, some tracts, and a few odd 
volumes picked up cheap at fairs ; an old musket (occasionally Ben's 
companion, sometimes Tom's) is hooked to the rafters near a double 
rope of onions; divers gaudy little prints, tempting spoil of pedlars, in 
honour of George Barnwell, the Prodigal Son, the Sailor's Return, and 
the Death of Nelson, decorate the walls, and an illuminated Christmas 
carol is pasted over the mantel-piece : which, among other chattels and 
possessions, conspicuously bears its own burden of Albert and Victoria 
— two plaster heads, resplendently coloured, highly varnished, looking 
with arched eye-brows of astonishment on their uninviting palace, and 
royally contrasting with the sombre hue of poverty on all things else. 
The pictures had belonged to Mary, no small portion of her virgin 
wealth ; and as for the statuary, those two busts had cost loyal Roger 
far more in comparison than any corporation has given to P. R. A., for 
majesty and consortship in full. There is, moreover, in the room, by 
way of household furniture, a ricketty, triangular, and tri-legged table, 
a bench, two old chairs with rush-bottoms, and a yard or two of matting 
that the sexton gave when the chancel was new laid. I don't know that 
there is any thing else to mention, unless it be a gaunt lurcher belonging 
to Ben Burke, and with all a dog's resemblance to his master, who lies 
stretched before the hearth where the peaty embers never quite die out, 
but smoulder away to a heap of white ashes; over these is hanging a 
black boiler, the cook of the family ; and beside them, on a substratum 
of dry heather, and wrapped about with an old blanket, nearly compan- 
ioned by his friend, the dog, snores Thomas Acton, still fast asleep, after 
his usual extemporaneous fashion. 

As to the up-stairs apartment, it contained little or nothing but its living 
inmates, their bedsteads and tattered coverlids, and had an air of even 
more penury and discomfort than the room below ; so that, what with 
squalling children, a scolding wife, and empty stomach, and that cold 
and wet March morning, it is little wonder maybe (though no small 
blame), that Roger Acton had not enough of religion or philosophy to 
rise and thank his Maker for the blessings of existence. 

He had just been dreaming of great good luck. Poor people often do 
so; just as Ugolino dreamt of imperial feasts, and Bruce, in his delirious 
thirst on the Sahara, could not banish from his mind the cool fountains 
of Shiraz, and the luxurious waters of old Nite. Roger had unfortunately 
dreamt of having found a crock of gold — I dare say he will tell us his 



THE CONTRAST. 



17 



dream anon — and just as lie was counting out his treasure, that blessed 
beautiful heap of shining money — cruel habit roused him up before the 
dawn, and his wealth faded from his fancy. So he awoke at five, any- 
thing but cheerfully. 

It was Grace's habit, good girl, to read to her father in the morning 
a few verses from the volume she best loved : she always woke betimes 
when she heard him getting up, and he could hear her easily from her 
little flock-bed behind the lath partition ; and many a time had her dear 
religious tongue, uttering the words of peace, soothed her father's mind, 
and strengthened him to meet the day's affliction ; many times it raised his 
thoughts from the heavy cares of life to the buoyant hopes of immortality. 
Hitherto, Roger had owed half his meek contentedness to those sweet 
lessons from a daughter's lips, and knew that he was reaping, as he 
heard, the harvest of his own paternal care, and heaven-blest instructions. 
However, upon this dark morning, he was full of other thoughts, mur- 
murings, and doubts, and poverty, and riches. So, when Grace, after 
her usual affectionate salutations, gently began to read, 

"The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared 
with the glory — " 

Her father strangely stopped her on a sudden with — 

"Enough, enough, my girl ! God wot, the sufferings are grievous, and 
the glory long a-coming." 

Then he heavily went down stairs, and lefl Grace crying. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CONTRAST. 

Thus, full of carking care, while he pushed aside the proffered conso- 
lation, Roger Acton walked abroad. There was yet but a glimmer of 
faint liwht, and the twittering of birds told more assuringlv of morning 
than any cheerful symptom on the sky : however, it had pretty well 
ceased raining, that was one comfort, and, as Roger, shouldering his 
spade, and with the day's provision in a handkerchief, trudged out upon 
his daily duty, those good old thoughts of thankfulness came upon his 
mind, and he forgot awhile the dream that had unstrung him. Turning 
B 2* 



Ig THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

for a moment to look upon his hovel, and bless its inmates with a prayer, 
he half resolved to run back, and hear a few more words, if only not to 
vex his darling child : but there was now no time to spare ; and then, as 
he gazed upon her desolate abode — so foul a casket for so fair a jewel — 
his bitter thoughts returned to him again, and he strode away, repining. 

Acton's cottage was one of those doubtful domiciles, whose only 
recommendation it is, that they are picturesque in summer. At present 
we behold a reeking rotting mass of black thatch in a cheerless swamp; 
but, as the year wears on, those time-stained walls, though still both damp 
and mouldy, will be luxuriantly overspread with creeping plants — honey- 
suckle, woodbine, jessamine, and the overblowing monthly rose. Many 
was the touring artist it had charmed, and Suffolk-street had seen it often : 
spectators looked upon the scene as on an old familiar friend, whose face 
they knew full well, but whose name they had forgotten for the minute. 
Many were the fair hands that had immortalized its beauties in their 
albums, and frequent the notes of admiration uttered by attending swains : 
particularly if there chanced to be taken into the view a feathery elm 
that now creaked overhead, and dripped on the thatch like the dropping- 
well at Knaresborough, and (in the near distance) a large pond, or rather 
lake, upon whose sedgy banks, gay — not now, but soon about to be — 
with flowering reeds and bright green willows, the pretty cottage stood. 
In truth, if man were but an hibernating animal, invisible as dormice 
in the winter, and only to be seen with summer swallows, Acton's cot- 
tage at Hurstley might have been a cantle cut from the Elysian-fields. 
But there are certain other seasons in the year, and human nature cannot 
long exist on the merely "picturesque in summer." 

Some fifty yards, or so, from the hither shore, we discern a roughly 
wooded ait, Pike Island to wit, a famous place for fish, and the grand 
rendezvous for woodcocks; which, among other useful and ornamental 
purposes, serves to screen out the labourer's hovel, at this the narrowest 
part of the lake, from a view of that fine old mansion on the opposite 
shore, the seat of Sir John Vincent, a baronet just of age, and the great 
landlord of the neighbourhood. Toward this mansion, scarcely yet 
revealed in the clear gray eye of morning, our humble hero, having 
made the long round of the lake, is now fast trudging; and it may 
merit a word or two of plain description, to fill up time and scene, till 
he gets nearer. 

A smooth grassy eminence, richly studded with park-like clumps of 
trees, slopes up from the water's very edge to — Hurstley Hall ; yonder 



THE CONTRAST. I9 

goodly, if not gi*and, Elizabethan structure, full of muUioned windows, 
carved oak panels, stone-cut coats of arms, pinnacles, and traceries, and 
lozenges, and drops; and all this glory crowned by a many-gabled, high- 
peaked roof. A grove of evergreens and American shrubs hides the 
lower windows from vulgarian gaze — for, in the neighbourly feeling of 
our ancestors, a public way leads close along the front; while, behind 
the house, and inaccessible to eyes profane, are drawn terraced gardens, 
beautifully kept, and blooming with a perpetual succession of the choicest 
flowers. The woods and shrubberies around, attempted some half a 
century back to be spoilt by the meddlesome bad taste of Capability 
Brown, have been somewhat too resolutely robbed of the formal avenues, 
clipped hedges, and other topiarian adjuncts which comport so well with 
the starch prudery of things Elizabethan ; but they are still replete with 
grotto, fountain, labyrinth, and alcove — a very paradise for the more court- 
bred rank of sylphs, and the gentler elves of Queen Titania. 

However, we have less to do with the gardens than, probably, the 
elves have; and as Roger now, just at breaking day, is approaching the 
windows somewhat too curiously for a poor man's manners, it may not 
be amiss if we bear him company. He had pretty well recovered of 
his fit of discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom 
away; so he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, 
after all, it is a middling happy world, and how that the raindi'ops, now 
that it had cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a 
sudden, as he turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, 
at that quiet hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds — voices so loud 
with oaths and altercation — such a calling, clattering, and quarrelling, as 
he had never heard the like before. So no wonder that he stepped aside 
to see it. 

The noise proceeded from a ground-floor window, or rather from three 
windows, lighted up, and hung with draperies of crimson and gold : one 
of the casements, flaring meretriciously in the modest eye of morn, stood 
wide open down to the floor, probably to cool a heated atmosphere ; and 
when Roger Acton, with a natural curiosity, went on tiptoe, looked in, 
and just put aside the curtain for a peep, to know what on earth could 
be the matter, he saw a vision of waste and wealth, at which he stood 
like one amazed, for a poor man's mind could never have conceived 
its equal. 

Evidently, he had intruded on the latter end of a long and luxurious 
revel. Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their 



20 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion — for mirrors made them 
infinite ; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide and 
warm banqueting-room ; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that Roger 
^ fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals ; a wagon-load of 
silver was piled upon the sideboard ; there blazed in the burnished grate 
such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen winter's night, but never 
can have thawed its blood beside : fruits, and wines, and costly glass were 
scattered in prodigal disorder on the board — just now deserted of its noisy 
guests, who had crowded round a certain green table, where cards and 
heaps of sovereigns appeared to be mingled in a mass. Roger had never 
so much as conceived it possible that there could be wealth like this : it 
was a fairy-land of Mammon in his eyes : he stood gasping like a man 
enchanted ; and in the contemplation of these little hills of gold — in their 
covetous longing contemplation, he forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned 
aside to see, and thirsted for that rich store earnestly. 

In an instant, as he looked (after the comparative lull that must 
obviously have succeeded to the clamours he had first heard), the roar 
and riot broke out worse than ever. There were the stormy revellers, 
as the rabble rout of Comus and his crew, filling that luxurious room 
with the sounds of noisy execration and half-drunken strife. Young 
Sir John, a free and generous fellow, by far the best among them all, 
has collected about him those whom he thought friends, to celebrate his 
wished majority ; they had now kept it up, night after night, hard upon 
a week ; and, as well became such friends — the gambler, the duellist, 
the man of pleasure, and the fool of Fashion — they never yet had sep- 
arated for their day-light beds, without a climax to their orgie, some- 
thing like the present scene. 

Henry Mynton, high in oath, and dashing down his cards, has charged 
Sir Richard Hunt with cheating (it was sauler la coupe or couper la saut, 
or some such mystery of iniquity, I I'eally cannot tell which) : Sir 
Richard, a stout dark man, the patriarch of the party, glossily wigged 
upon his head, and imperially tufted on his chin, retorts with a pungent 
sarcasm, calmly and coolly uttered; that hot-headed fool Silliphant, 
clearly quite intoxicated, backs his cousin Mynton's view of the case by 
the cogent argument of a dice-box at Sir Richard's head — and at once 
all is struggle, strife, and uproar. The other guests, young fellows of 
high fashion, now too much warmed with wine to remember their accus- 
tomed Mohican cold-bloodedness — those happy debtors to the proM'^ess of 
a Stultz, and walking advertisers of Nugee — ^take eager part witli the 



THE LOST THEFT. 21 

opposed belligerents : more than one decanter is sent hissing through the 
air; more than one bloody coxcomb witnesses to the weight of a candle- 
stick and its hurler's clever aim : uplifted chairs are made the weapons 
of the chivalric combatants; and along with divers other less distin- 
guished victims in the melee, poor Sir John Vincent, rushing into the 
midst, as a well-intentioned host, to quell the drunken brawl, gets 
knocked down among them all ; the tables are upset, the bright gold 
runs about the room in all dii'ections — ha! no one heeds it — no one owns 
it — one little piece rolled right up to the window-sill where Roger still 
looked on with all his eyes ; it is but to put his hand in — the window is 
open to the floor — nay a finger is enough : greedily, one undecided 
moment, did he gaze upon the gold ; he saw the hideous contrast of his 
own dim hovel and that radiant chamber — he remembered the pining 
faces of his babes, and gentle Grace with all her hardships — he thought 
upon his poverty and well deserts — he looked upon wastefulness of 
wealth and wantonness of living — these reflections struck him in a 
moment; no one saw him, no one cared about the gold; that little 
blessed morsel, that could do him so much good ; all was confusion, ail 
was opportunity, and who can wonder that his fingers closed upon the 
sovereign, and that he picked it up? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE LOST THEFT. 

Stealthily and quickly "honest Roger" crept away, for his con- 
science smote him on the instant: he felt he had done wrong; at any 
rate, the sovereign was not his — and once the thought arose in him to 
run back, and put it where he found it: but it was now become too 
precious in his sight, that little bit of gold — and they, the rioters there, 
could not want it, might not even miss it ; and then its righteous uses — 
it should be well spent, even if ill-got : and thus, so many mitigations 
crowded in to excuse, if not to applaud the action, that within a little 
while his warped mind had come to call the theft a god-send. 

O Roger, Roger ! alas for this false thought of that wrong deed ! the 
poisonous gold has touched thy heart, and left on it a spot of cancer : the 
asp has bitten thee already, simple soul. This little seed will grow into 



22 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

a huge black pine, that shall darken for a while thy heaven, and dig its 
evil roots around thy happiness. Put it away, Roger, put it away: 
covet not unhallowed gold. 

But Roger felt far otherwise ; and this sudden qualm of conscience 
once quelled (I will say there seemed much of palliation in the matter), 
a kind of inebriate feeling of delight filled his mind, and Steady Acton 
plodded on to the meadow yonder, half a mile a-head, in a species of 
delirious complacency. Here was luck indeed, filling up the promise 
of his dreams. His head was full of thoughts, pleasant holiday thoughts, 
of the many little useful things, the many small indulgences, that bit 
of gold should buy him. He would change it on the sly, and gradually 
bring the shillings home as extra pay for extra work ; for, however 
much his wife might glory in the chance, and keep his secret, well he 
knew that Grace would have a world of things to say about it, and he 
feared to tell his daughter of the deed. However, she should have a 
ribbon, so she should, good girl, and the pedlar shouldn't pass the door 
unbidden ; Mary, too, might have a cotton kerchief, and the babes a doll 
and a rattle, and poor Thomas a shilling to spend as he liked ; and so, 
in happy revery, the kind father distributed his ill-got sovereign. 

For a while he held it in his hand, as loth to part from the tangible 
possession of his treasure; but manual contact could not last all day, 
and, as he neared his scene of labour — he came late after all, by the by, 
and lost the quarter-day, but it mattered little now — he began to cogitate 
a place of safety ; and carefully put it in his fob. Poor fellow — he had 
never had enough to stow so well away before : his pockets had been 
thought quite trust- worthy enough for any treasures hitherto : never had 
he used that fob for watch, or note, or gold — and his predecessor in the 
cast-off garment had probably been quite aware how little that false fob 
was worthy of the name of savings' bank ; it was in the situation of the 
Irishman's illimitable rope, with the end cut off. So wliile Roger was 
brewing up vast schemes of nascent wealth, and prosperous days at last, 
the filched sovereign, attracted by centripetal gravity, had found a 
passage downwards, and had straightway rolled into a crevice of mother- 
earth, long before its "brief lord" had commenced his day's labour. 
Yes, it had been lost a good hour ere he found it outj for he had fancied 
that he h^d felt it there, and often did he feel, but his fancy was a but- 
ton ; and when he made the dread discovery, what a sting of momentary 
anguish, what a sickening fear, what an eager search ! and, as the grim 
truth became more evident, that, indeed, beyond all remedy, his new-got, 



THE INQUEST. 23 

ill-got, egg of coming wealth was all clean gone — oh ! this was worm- 
wood, this was bitter as gall, and the strong man well-nigh fainted. It 
was something sad to have done the ill — but misery to have done it all 
for nothing : the sin was not altogether pleasant to his taste, but it was 
aloe itself to lose the reward. And when, pale and sick, leaning on his 
spade, he came to his old strength again, what was the reaction ? Com- 
punction at incipient crime, and gratitude to find its punishment so mer- 
cifully speedy, so lenient, so discriminative? I fear that if ever he had 
these thoughts at all, he chased them wilfully away : his disappointment, 
far from being softened into patience, was sharpened to a feeling of 
revenge at fate ; and all his hope now was — such another chance, gold, 
more gold, never mind how; more gold, he burnt for gold, he lusted 
after gold ! 

We must leave him for a time to his toil and his reflections, and 
touch another topic of our theme. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INQUEST. 



Just a week before the baronet came of age, and a fortnight from the 
present time, an awful and mysterious event had happened at the Hall : 
the old house-keeper, Mrs. Quarles, had been found dead in her bed, 
under circumstances, to say the very least, of a black and suspicious 
appearance. The county coroner had got a juiy of the neighbours 
impanelled together; who, after sitting patiently on the inquest, and 
hearing, as well as seeing, the following evidence, could arrive at no 
verdict more specific than the obvious fact, that the poor old creature 
had been "found dead." The great question lay between apoplexy and 
murder ; and the evidence tended to a well-matched conflict of opinions. 

First, there lay the body, quietly in bed, tucked in tidily and undis- 
turbed, with no marks of struggling, none whatever — the clothes lay 
smooth, and the chamber orderly : yet the corpse's face was of a purple 
hue, the tongue swollen, the eyes starting from their sockets: it might, 
indeed, possibly have been an apoplectic seizure, which took her in her 
sleep, and killed her as she lay ; but that the gripe of clutching fingers 



2^1 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

had left their livid seals upon the throat, and countenanced the dread- 
ful thouffht of strangulation ! 

Secondly, a surgeon (one Mr. Eager, the Union doctor, a very young 
personage, wrong withal and radical) maintained that this actual stran- 
gulation might have been effected by the hands of the deceased herself, 
in the paroxysm of a rush of blood to the brain ; and he fortified his 
wise position by the instance of a late statesman, who, he averred, cut 
his throat with a pen-knife, to relieve himself of pressure on the tem- 
ples : while another surgeon — Stephen Cramp, he was farrier as well, 
and had been, until lately, time out of mind, the village iEsculapius, 
who looked with scorn on his pert rival, and opposed him tooth and nail 
on all occasions — insisted that it was not only physically impossible for 
poor Mrs. Quarles so to have strangled herself, but more particularly 
that, if she had done so, she certainly could not have laid herself out 
so decently aflerwai'ds ; therefore, that as some one else had kindly done 
the latter office for her, why not the former too ? 

Thirdly, Sarah Stack, the still-room maid, deposed, that Mrs. Quarles 
always locked her door before she went to bed, but that when she 
(deponent) went to call her as usual on the fatal morning, the door was 
just ajar; and so she found her dead: while parallel with this, tending 
to implicate some domestic criminal, was to be placed the equally uncom- 
mon fact, that the other door of Mrs. Quarles's room, leading to the lawn, 
was open too : — be it known that Mrs. Quarles was a stout woman, who 
could'nt abide to sleep up-stairs, for fear of fire; moreover, that she was 
a nervous woman, who took extraordinary precautions for her safety, in 
case of thieves. Thus, unaccountably enough, the murderer, if there 
was any, was as likely to have come from the outside, as from the in. 

Fourthly, the murderer in this way is commonly a thief, and does the 
deed for mammon-sake ; but the new house-keeper, lately installed, made 
her deposition, that, by inventories duly kept and entered — for her hon- 
oured predecessor, rest her soul ! had been a pattern of regularity — all 
Mrs. Quarles's goods and personal chattels were found to be safe and 
right in her room — some silver spoons among them too — ay, and a silver 
tea-pot ; while, as to other property in the house, with every room full 
of valuables, nothing whatever was missing from the lists, except, indeed, 
what was scarce worth mention (unless one must be very exact), sundry 
crocks and gallipots of honey, not forthcoming ; these, however, it appeared 
probable that Mrs. Quarles had herself consumed in a certain mixture 
she nightly was accustomed too, of rum, horehound, and other matters 



THE INQUEST. 25 

sweetened up with honey, for her hoarseness. It seemed therefore clear 
she was not murdered for her property, nor by any one intending to have 
robbed the house. 

Against this it was contended, and really with some show of reason, 
that as Mrs. Quarles was thought to have a hoard, always set her face 
against banks, railway shares, speculations, and investments, and seemed 
to have left nothing behind her but her clothes and so forth, it was still 
possible that the murderer who took the life, might have also been the 
thief to take the money. 

Fifthly, Simon Jennings — butler in doors, bailiff out of doors, and 
general factotum every where to the Vincent interest — for he had man- 
aged to monopolize every place worth having, from the agent's book to 
the cellar-man's key — the said Simon deposed, that on the night in ques- 
tion, he heard the house-dog barking furiously, and went out to quiet 
him ; but found no thieves, nor knew any reason why the dog should 
have barked so much. 

Now, the awkward matter in this deposition (if Mr. Jennings had not 
been entirely above suspicion — the idea was quite absurd — not to mention 
that he was nephew to the deceased, a great favourite with her, and a 
man altogether of the very strictest character), the awkward matters 
were these : the nearest way out to the dog, indeed the only way but 
casement windows on that side of the house, was through Mrs. Quarles's 
room : she had had the dog placed there for her special safety, as she 
slept on the ground floor ; and it was not to be thought that Mr. Jennings 
could do so incorrect a thing as to pass through her room after bed-time, 
locked or unlocked — indeed, when the question was delicately hinted to 
him, he was quite shocked at it — quite shocked. But if he did not go 
that way, which way did he go? He deposed, indeed, and his testimony 
was no ways to be doubted, that he went through the front door, and so 
round ; which, under the circumstances, was at once a very brave and 
a very foolish thing to do ; for it is, first, little wisdom to go round two 
sides of a square to quiet a dog, when one might have easily called to 
him from the men-servants' window ; and secondly, albeit Mr. Jennings 
was a strict man, an upright man, shrewd withal, and calculating, no 
one had ever thought him capable of that Roman virtue, courage. Still, 
he had reluctantly confessed to this one heroic act, and it was a bold one, 
so let him take the credit of it — mainly because — 

Sixthly, Jonathan Floyd, footman, after having heard the dog bark at 
intervals, surely for more than a couple of hours, thought he might as 

3 



26 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

well turn out of his snug berth for a minute, just to see what ailed the 
doT, or how many thieves were really breaking in. Well, as he looked, 
he fancied he saw a boat moving on the lake, but as there was no moon, 
he might have been mistaken. 

By a Juryman. It might be a punt. 

By another. He did'nt know how many boats there were on the lake- 
side : they had a boat-house at the Hall, by the water's edge, and there- 
fore he concluded something in it ; really did'nt know ; might be a boat, 
might be a punt, might be both — or neither. 

By the Coroner. Could not swear which way it was moving ; and, 
really, if put upon his Bible oath, wouldn't be positive about a boat at 
I all, it was so dark, and he was so sleepy. 

Not long afterwards, as the dog got still more violent, he turned his 
eyes from straining after shadows on the lake, to look at home, and then 
all at once noticed Mr. Jennings trying to quiet the noisy animal with 
the usual blandishments of "Good dog, good dog — quiet, Don, quiet — 
down, good dog — down, Don, down !" 

By a Juryman. He would swear to the words. 

But Don would not hear of being quiet. After that, knowing all 
must be right if Mr. Jennings was about, he (deponent) turned in again, 
Avent to sleep, and thought no more of it till he heard of Mrs. Quarles's 
death in the morning. If he may be so bold as to speak his mind, he 
thinks the house-keeper, being fat, died o' the 'plexy in a nateral way, 
and that the dog barking so, just as she was a-going off, is proof positive 
of it. He 'd often heard of dogs doing so ; they saw the sperit gliding 
away, and barked at it ; his (deponent's) own grandmother — 

At this juncture — for the court was getting fidgetty — the coroner cut 
short the opinions of Jonathan Floyd : and when Mr. Crown, summing 
up, presented in one focus all this evidence to the misty minds of the 
assembled jurymen, it puzzled them entirely ; they could not see their 
way, fairly addled, did not know at all what to make of it. On the 
threshold, there was no proof it was a murder — the Union doctor was 
loud and staunch on this ; and next, there seemed to be no motive for the 
deed, and no one to suspect of it : so they left the matter open, found her 
simply "Dead," and troubled their heads no more about the business. 

Good Mr. Evans, the vicar, preached her funeral sermon, only as last 
Sunday, amplifying the idea that she "was cut off in the midst of her 
days:" and thereby encouraging many of the simpler folks, who knew 
tliat Mrs. Quarles had long passed seventy, in the luminous notion that 



THEBAILfFF. 27 

house-keepers in great establishments are privileged, among other 
undoubted perquisites, to live to a hundred and forty, unless cut off by 
apoplexy or murder. 

Mr. Simon Jennings, as nephew and next of kin, followed the body to 
its last home in the capacity of chief mourner; to do him justice, he 
was a real mourner, bewailed her loudly, and had never been the same 
man since. Moreover, although aforetime not much given to indiscrim- 
inate charity, he had now gained no small credit by distributing his 
aunt's wardrobe among the poorer families at Hurstley. It was really 
very kind of him, and the more so, as being altogether unexpected : he 
got great praise for his, did Mr. Jennings ; specially, too, because he had 
gained nothing whatever from his aunt's death, though her heir and 
probable legatee, and clearly was a disappointed man. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BMI.IFF; AND A BITTER TRL^. 



Jennings — Mr. Simon Jennings — for he prided himself much both on 
the Mr. and the Simon, was an upright man, a very upright man indeed, 
literally so as well as metaphorically. He was not tall certainly, but 
what there was of him stood bolt upright. Many fancied that his neck 
was possessed of some natural infirmity, or rather firmity, of unbenda- 
bleness, some little-to-be-envied property of being a perpetual stiff-neck ; 
and they were the more countenanced in this theory, from the fact that, 
within a few days past, Mr. Jennings had contracted an ugly knack of 
carrying his erect head in the comfortless position of peeping over his 
left shoulder ; not always so, indeed, but often enough to be remarkable ; 
and then he would occasionally start it straight again, eyes right, with a 
nervous twitch, any thing but pleasant to the marvelling spectator. It 
was as if he was momentarily expecting to look upon some vague object 
that affrighted him, and sometimes really did see it. Mr. Jennings had 
consulted high medical authority (as Hurstley judged), to wit, the 
Union doctor of last scene, an enterprising practitioner, glib in theory, 
and bold in practice — and it had been mutually agreed between them 
that "stomach" was the cause of these unhandsome symptoms; acridity 



28 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

of the gastric juice, consequent indigestion and spasm, and generally a 
hypochondriacal habit of body. Mr. Jennings must take certain draughts 
thrice a day, be very careful of his diet, and keep his mind at ease. As 
to Simon himself, he was, poor man, much to be pitied in this ideal visita- 
tion; for, though his looks confessed that he saw, or fancied he saw, a 
something, he declared himself wholly at a loss to explain \*at that 
something was : moreover, contrary to former habits of an ostentatious 
boldness, he seemed meekly to shrink from observation : and, as he 
piously acquiesced in the annoyance, would observe that his unpleasant 
jerking was "a little matter after all, and that, no doubt, the will of 
Providence." 

Independently of these new grimaces, Simon's appearance was little 
in his favour : not that his small dimensions signified — Csesar, and Buo- 
naparte, and Wellington, and Nelson, all were little men — not that his 
dress was other than respectable — black coat and waistcoat, white stiff 
cravat, gray trowsers somewhat shrunk in longitude, good serviceable 
shoe-leather (of the shape, if not also of the size, of river barges), and 
plenty of unbleached cotton stocking about the gnarled region of his 
ankles. All this was well enough; nature was beholden to that charity 
of art which hides a multitude of failings; but the face, where native 
man looks forth in all his unadornment, that it was which so seldom pre- 
possessed the many who had never heard of Jenning's strict character 
and stern integrity. The face was a sallow face, peaked towards the 
nose, with head and chin receding ; lit withal by small protrusive eyes, 
so constructed, that the whites all round were generally visible, giving 
them a strange and staring look ; elevated eye-brows ; not an inch of 
whisker, but all shaved sore right up to the large and prominent ear ; 
and lank black hair, not much of it, scantily thatching all smooth. 
Then his arms, oscillating as he walked (as if the pendulum by which 
that rigid man was made to go his regular routine), were much too 
long for symmetry : and altogether, to casual view, Mr. Jennings must 
acknowledge to a supercilious, yet sneaking air — which charity has ere 
now been kind enough to think a conscious rectitude towards man, and 
a soft-going humility with God. 

When the bailifT takes his round about the property, as we see him 
now, he is mounted — to say he rides would convey far too equestrian a 
notion — he is mounted on a rough-coated, quiet, old, white shooting-pony ; . 
the saddle strangely girded on with many bands about the belly, the 
stirrups astonishingly short, and straps never called upon to diminish tiiat 



THE BAILIFF. 29 

long whity-brown interval between shoe and trowser: Mr. Jennings sits 
his steed with nose aloft, and a high perch in the general, somewhat 
loosely, and, had the pony been a Bucephalus rather than a Rozinante, 
not a little perilously. Simon is jogging hitherwards toward Roger 
Acton, as he digs the land-drain across this marshy meadow : let us see 
how it fares now with our poor hero. 

Occupation — yes, duteous occupation — has exerted its wholsesome 
influences, and, thank God ! Roger is himself again. He has been very 
sorry half the day, both for the wicked feelings of the morning, and that 
still more wicked theft — a bad business altogether, he cannot bear to 
think of it ; the gold was none of his, whosesoever it might be — he ought 
not to have touched it — vexed he did, but cannot help it now ; it is well 
he lost it too, for ill-got money never came to any good : though, to be 
sure, if he could only get it honestly, money would make a man of him. 

I am not sure of that, Roger, it may be so sometimes; but, in my 
judgment, money has unmade more men than made them. 

"How now, Acton, is not this drain dug yet! You have been about 
it niuch too long, sir ; I shall fine you for this." 

"Please you, Muster Jennings, I've stuck to it pretty tightly too, bar- 
ring that I make to-day three-quarters, being late : but it's heavy clay, 
you see, Mr. Simon — wet above and iron-hard below : it shall all be 
ready by to-morrow, Mr. Simon." 

Whether the " Mr. Simon " had its softening influence, or any other 
considerations lent their soothing aid, we shall see presently; for the 
bailiff" added, in a tone unusually indulgent, 

"Well, Roger, see it is done, and well done; and now I have just 
another word to say to you : his honour is coming round this way, and 
if he asks you any questions, remember to be sure and tell him this — 
you have got a comfortable cottage, very comfortable, just repaired, you 
want for nothing, and are earning twelve shillings a week." 

"God help me. Muster Jennings: why my wages are but eight, and 
my hovel scarcely better than a pig-pound." 

" Look you, Acton ; tell Sir John what you have told me, and you 
are a ruined man. Make it twelve to his honour, as others shall do: 
who knows," he added, half-coaxing, half-soliloquizing, "perhaps his 
honour may really make it twelve, instead of eight." 

"Oh, Muster Jennings! and who gets the odd four?" 

"What, man! do you dare to ask me that? Remember, sir, at your 
peril, that you, and all the rest, have had twelve shillings a-week wages 

3* 



30 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

whenever you have worked on this estate — not a word ! — and that, if 
you dare speak or even think to the contrary, you never earn a penny 
here again. But here comes John Vincent, my master, as I, Simon 
Jennings, am yours : be careful what you say to him." 

Sir Jolm Devereux Vincent, after a long minority, had at length 
shaken off his guardians, and become master of his own doings, and of 
Hurstley Hall. The property was in pretty decent order, and funds had 
accumulated vastly: all this notwithstanding a thousand peculations, 
and the suspicious incident that one of the guardians was a " highly 
respectable" solicitor. Sir John, like most new brooms, had with the best 
intentions resolved upon sweeping measures of great good ; especially 
also upon doing a great deal with his own eyes and ears ; but, like as 
aforesaid, he was permitted neither to hear nor see any truths at all. 
Just now, the usual night's work took him a little off the hooks, and we 
must make allowances; really, too, he was by far the soberest of all 
those choice spiritS; and drank and played as little as he could ; and even, 
under existing disadvantages, he managed by four o'clock post meridiem 
to inspect a certain portion of the estate duly every day, under the pru- 
dential guidance of his bailiff Jennings. There, that good-looking, tall 
young fellow on the blood mare just cantering up to us is Sir John ; the 
other two are a couple of the gallant youths now feasting at the Hall : 
ay, two of the fiercest foes in last night's bi'oil. Those heated little 
matters are easily got over. 

"Hollo, Jennings! what the devil made you give that start? you 
couldn't look more horrified if ghosts were at your elbow : why, your 
face is the picture of death ; look another way, man, do, or my mare 
will bolt." 

"I beg your pardon, Sir John, but the spasm took me: it is my 
infirmity; forgive it. This meadow, you perceive, Sir John, requires 
drainage, and afterwards I propose to dress it with free chalk to sweeten 
the grass. Next field, you will take notice, the guano — " 

" Well, well — Jennings — and that poor fellow there up to his knees in 
mud, is he pretty tolerably off now ?" 

"Oh, your honour," said the bailiff, with a knowing look, "I only 
wish that half the little farmers hereabouts were as well to do as he is : 
a pretty cottage. Sir John, half an acre of garden, and twelve shillings 
a-week, is pretty middling for a single man." 

"Aha — is it? — well; but the poor devil looks wretched enough too — 
I will just ask him if he wants any thing now." 



THE BAILIFF. 31 

" Don't, Sir John, pray don't ; pray permit me to advise your honour : 
these men are always wanting. ' Acton's cottage' is a proverb ; and 
Roger there can want for nothing honestly; nevertheless, as I know 
your honour's good heart, and wish to make all happy, if you will suffer 
me to see to it myself — " 

"Certainly, Jennings, do, do by all means, and thank you: here, just 
to make a beginning, as we 're all so jolly at the Hall, and that poor 
fellow 's up to his neck in mud, give him this from me to drink my 
health with." 

Acton, who had dutifully held aloof, and kept on digging steadily, 
was still quite near enough to hear all this; at the magical word "give," 
he looked up hurriedly, and saw Sir John Vincent toss a piece of gold 
— yes, on his dying oath, a bright new sovereign — to Simon Jennings. 
O blessed vision, and gold was to be his at last! 

"Come along, Mynton; Hunt, now mind you try and lame that big 
beast of a raw-boned charger among these gutters, will you? I'm off, 
Jennings ; meet me, do you hear, at the Croft to-mor — " 

So the three friends galloped away; and John Vincent really felt 
more light-hearted and happy than at any time the week past, for having 
so properly got rid of a welcome bit of gold. 

" Roger Acton ! come up here, sir, out of that ditch : his honour has 
been liberal enough to give you a shilling to drink his health with." 

" A shilling. Muster Jennings ?" said the poor astonished man ; " why 
I'll make oath it was a pound ; I saw it myself. Come, Muster Jennings, 
don't break jokes upon a poor man's back." 

"Jokes, Acton? sticks, sir, if you say another word: take. John Vin- 
cent's shilling." 

"Oh, sir! " cried Roger, quite unmanned at this most cruel disappoint- 
ment ; " be merciful — be generous — give me my gold, my own bit of 
gold ! I'll swear his honour gave it for me : blessings on his head ! 
You know he did, Mr. Simon; don't play upon me!" 

" Play upon you ? — generous — your gold — what is it you mean, man ? 
We '11 have no madmen about us, I can tell you ; take the shilling, 
or else — " 

" ' Rob not the poor, because he is poor, for the Lord shall plead his 
cause,' " was the solemn answer. 

"'Roger Acton !" — the bailiff gave a scared start, as usual, and, recov- 
ering himself, looked both white and stern: "you have dared to quote 
the Bible against me : deeply shall you rue it. Begone, man ' your 
work on this estate is at an end." 



32 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

CHAPTER VII. 

TVnONGS AND RUIN. 

A VERY miserable man was Roger Acton now, for this last trial was 
the worst of all. The vapours of his discontent had almost passed 
away — ^that bright pernicious dream was being rapidly forgotten — the 
morning's ill-got coin, "thank the Lord, it was lost as soon as found," 
and penitence had washed away that blot upon his soul ; but here, an 
honest pound, liberally bestowed by his hereditary landlord — his own 
bright bit of gold — the only bit but one he ever had (and how different 
in innocence from that one!) — a seeming sugar-drop of kindness, shed 
by the rich heavens on his cup of poverty — to have this meanly filched 
away by a grasping, grinding task-master — oh, was it not a bitter trial ? 
What affliction as to this world's wealth can a man meet worse than this? 

"Acton's first impulse was to run to the Hall, and ask to see Sir 
John : — " Out ; M^on't be back till seven, and then can see nobody ; the 
baronet will be dressing for dinner, and musn't be disturbed." Then he 
made a vain effort to speak with Mr. Jennings, and plead with him : yes, 
even on his knees, if must be. Mr. Simon could not be so bad ; per- 
haps it was a long joke after all — the bailiff" always had a queer way 
with him. Or, if indeed the man meant robbery, loudly to threaten him, 
that all might hear, to bring the house about his ears, and force justice, 
if he could not fawn it. But both these conflicting expedients were 
vetoed. Jonathan Floyd, who took in Acton's meek message of "hum- 
bly craved leave to speak with Master Jennings," came back with the 
inexplicable mandate, "Warn Roger Acton from the premises." So, he 
must needs bide till to-morrow morning, when, come what might, he 
resolved to see his honour, and set some truths before him. 

Acton was not the only man on the estate who knew that he had a 
landlord, generous, not to say prodigal — a warm-hearted, well-inten- 
tioned master, whose mere youth a career of sensuality had not yet 
hardened, nor a course of dissipation been prolonged enough to distort 
his feelings from the right. And Acton, moreover, was not the only 
man who wondered how, with such a landlord (ay, and the guardians 
before him were always well-spoken gentle-folks, kindly in their man- 
ners, and liberal in their looks), wages could be kept so low, and rents 



WRONGS AND RUIN. 33 

• 

so high, and indulgences so few, and penalties so many. There were 
fines for every thing, and no allowances of hedgebote, or housebote, or 
any other time-honoured right; the very peat on the common must be 
paid for, and if a child picked a bit of fagot the father was mulcted in 
a shilling. Mr. Jennings did all this, and always pleaded his employ, 
ers' orders; nay, if any grumbled, as men would now and then, he 
would affect to think it strange that the gentlemen guardians, with the 
landlord at their head, could be so hard upon the poor : he would not be 
so, credit him, if he had been born a gentleman ; but the bailiff, men, 
must obey orders, like the rest of you ; these are hard times for Hurst- 
ley, he would say, and we must all rub over them as best we can. 
According to Simon, it was as much as his own place was worth to 
remit one single penny of a fine, or make the least indulgence for 
calamity ; while, as to lowering a cotter's rent, or raising a ditcher's 
wages, he dared not do it for his life ; folks must not blame him, but look 
to the landlord. 

Now, all this, in the long absence of any definite resident master at 
the Hall, sounded reasonable, if true ; and Mr. Jennings punctually 
paid, however bad the terms; so the poor men bode their time, and 
looked for better days. And the days long-looked-for now were come ; 
but were they any better? The baronet, indeed, seemed bent upon 
inquiry, reform, redress ; but, as he never went without the right-hand 
man, his endeavours were always unsuccessful. At first it would appear 
that the bailiff had gone upon his old plan, shrugging up his shoulders 
to the men at the master's meanness, while he praised to the landlord the 
condition of his tenants ; but this could not long deceive, so he turned 
instanter on another tack; he assumed the despot, issuing authoritative 
edicts, which no one dared to disobey ; he made the labourer hide his 
needs, and intercepted at its source the lord's benevolence ; he began to 
be found out, so the bolder spirits said, in filching with both hands from 
man and master ; and, to the mind of more than one shrewd observer, 
was playing the unjust steward to admiration. 

But stop : let us hear the other side ; it is possible we may have been 
mistaken. Bailiffs are never popular, particularly if they are too honest, 
and this one is a stern man with a repulsive manner. Who knows 
whether his advice to Acton may not have been wise and kind, and would 
not have conduced to a general rise of wages? Who can prove, nay, 
venture to insinuate, any such systematic roguery against a man hitherto 
so strict, so punctual, so sanctimonious? Even in the case of Sir John's 
C 



34 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

golden gift, Jennings may be right after all ; it is quite possible that Roger 
was mistaken, and had gilt a piece of silver with his longings ; and the 
upright man might well take umbrage at so vile an imputation as that 
hot and silly speech ; it was foolish, very foolish, to have quoted text 
against him, and no wonder that the labourer got dismissed for it. Then 
again to return to wages — who knows? it might be, all things considered, 
the only way of managing a rise ; the bailiff must know his master's mind 
best, and Acton had been wise to have done as he bade him ; perhaps it 
really was well-meant, and might have got him twelve shillings a- week, 
instead of eight as hitherto ; perhaps Simon was a shrewd man, and 
arranged it cleverly ; perhaps Roger was an honest man, and couldn't 
but think others so. 

Any how, though, all was lost now, and he blamed his own rash tongue, 
poor fellow, for what he could not help fearing was the ruin of himself 
and all he loved. With a melancholy heart, he shouldered his spade, 
and slowly plodded homewards. How long should he have a home ? 
How was he to get bread, to get work, if the bailiff was his enemy? 
How could he face his wife, and tell her all the foolish past and dreadful 
future? How could he bear to look on Grace, too beautiful Grace, and 
torture his heart by fancying her fate ? Thomas, too, his own brave boy, 
whom utter poverty might drive to desperation ? And the poor babes, his 
little playful pets, what on earth would become of them ? There was the 
Union workhouse to be sure, but Acton shuddered at the thought; to be 
separated from every thing he loved, to give up his little all, and be made 
both a prisoner and a slave, all for the sake of what? — daily water-gruel, 
and a pauper's branded livery. Or they might perchance go beyond 
the seas, if some Prince Edward's Company would help him and his to 
emigrate ; ay, thought he, and run new risks, encounter fresh dangers, 
lose every thing, get nothing, and all the trouble taken merely to starve 
three thousand miles from home. No, no ; at his time of life, he could not 
be leaving for ever old friends, old habits, old fields, old home, old neigh- 
bourhood — where he had seen the saplings grow up trees, and the quick 
toppings change into a ten-foot hedge ; where the very cattle knew his 
step, and the clods broke kindly to his ploughshare ; and more than all, 
the dear old church, where his forefathers had worshipped from the 
Conquest, and the old mounds where they slept, and — and — and — that one 
precious grave of his dear lost Annie — could he leave it? Oh God, no! 
he had done no ill, he had committed no crime — why should he prefer 
the convict's doom, and seek to be transported for life? 



THE COVETOUS DREAM. 35 

A miserable walk home was that, and full of wretched thoughts. 
Poor Roger Acton, tossed by much trouble, vexed with sore oppression, 
I wish that you had prayed in your distress ; stop, he did pray, and that 
vehemently ; but it was not for help, or guidance, or patience, or conso- 
lation — he only prayed for gold. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE COTETOUS DEK\M. 

Once at home, the sad truth soon was told. Roger's look alone spoke 
of some calamity, and he had but little heart or hope to keep the matter 
secret. True, he said not a word about the early morning's sin ; why 
should he ? he bad been punished for it, and he had repented ; let him 
be humbled before God, but not confess to man. However, all about 
the bailiff, and the landlord, and the thieved gift, and the sudden dis- 
missal, the sure ruin, tlie dismal wayside plans, and fears, and dark 
alternatives, without one hope in any — these did poor Acton fluently 
pour forth with broken-hearted eloquence ; to these Grace listened 
sorrowfully, with a face full of gentle trust in God's blessing on the 
morrow's interview ; these Mary, the wife, heard to an end, with — no 
storm of execration on ill-fortune, no ebullition of unjust rage against a 
fool of a husband, no vexing sneers, no selfish apprehensions. Far from 
it; there really was one unlooked-for blessing come already to console 
poor Roger ; and no little compensation for his trouble was the way his 
wife received the news. He, unlucky man, had expected something little 
short of a virago's talons, and a beldame's curse ; he had experienced 
on less occasions something of the sort before ; but now that real afflic- 
tion stood upon the hearth, Mary Acton's character rose with the emer- 
gency, and she greeted her ruined husband with a kindness towards 
him, a solemn indignation against those who grind the poor, and a so'ber 
courage to confront evil, which he little had imagined. 

"Bear up, Roger; here, goodman, take the child, and don't look quite 
so downcast; come what may, I'll share your cares, and you shall halve 
my pleasures ; we will fight it out together." 

Moreover, cross, and fidgetty, and scolding, as Mary had been ever 
heretofore, to her meek step-daughter Grace, all at once, as if just to 



36 THECROCKOFGOL D. . 

disappoint any preconcerted theory, now that actual calamity was come, 
she turned to be a kind good mother to her. Roger and his daughter 
could scarcely believe their ears. 

" Grace, dear, I know you're a sensible good girl, try and cheer your 
father." And then the step-dame added, 

"There now, just run up, fetch your prayer-book down, and read a 
little to us all to do us good." — The fair, affectionate girl, unused to the 
accents of kindness, could not forbear flinging her arms round Mary 
Acton's neck, and loving her, as Ruth loved Naomi. 

Then with a heavenly smile upon her face, and a happy heart within 
her to keep the smile alight, her gentle voice read these words — it will 
do us good to read them too : 

" Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. 

let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. 

If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, Lord, who may abide it? 
Because there is mercy with thee ; therefore shalt thou be feared. 

1 look for the Lord, my soul doth wait for him: in his word is my trust. 

My soul fleeth unto the Lord, before the morning watch, before the morning watch. 
O Israel, trust in the Lord : for with the Lord there is mercy : and with him is plen- 
teous redemption. 
And he shall redeem Israel from all his sins." 

"Isn't the last word 'troubles,' child? look again ; I thmk it's 'troubles' 
cither there, or leastways in the Bible-psalm." 

"No, father, sins, 'from all his sins;' and 'iniquities' in the Bible- 
version — look, father." 

" Well, girl, well ; I wish it had been 'troubles ;' ' from all his troubles ' 
is a better thought to my mind : God wot, I have plenty on 'em, and a 
little lot of gold would save us from them all." 

"Gold, father? no, my father — God." 

"I tell you, child," said Roger, ever vacillating in his strong tempta- 
tion between habitual religion and the new-caught lust of money, "if 
only on a sudden I could get gold by hook or by crook, all my cares 
and all your troubles would be over on the instant." 

" Oh, dear father, do not hope so ; and do not think of troubles more 
than sins ; there is no deliverance in Mammon ; riches profit not in the 
day of evil, and ill-got wealth tends to worse than poverty." 

"Well, any how, I only wish that dream of mine came true." 

"Dream, goodman — what dream?" said his wife. 

" Why, Poll, I dreamt I was a-working in my garden, hard by the 



THE COVETOUS DREAM. 37 

celery trenches in the sedge ; and I was moaning at my lot, as well I 
may : and a sort of angel came to me, only he looked dark and sorrowful, 
and kindly said, 'What would you have, Roger?' I, nothing fearful in 
my dream, for all the strangeness of his winged presence, answered 
boldly, 'Money;' he pointed with his finger, laughed aloud, and vanished 
away : and, as for me, I thought a minute wonderingly, turned to look 
where he had pointed, and, O the blessing! found a crock of gold!" 

"Hush, father ! tliat dark angel was the devil ; he has dropt ill thoughts 
upon your heart : I would I could see you as you used to be, dear father, 
till within these two days." 

"Whoever he were, if he brought me gold, he would bring me 
blessing. There's meat and drink, and warmth and shelter, in the 
yellow gold — ay, and rest from labour, child, and a power of rare 
good gifts." 

"If God had made them good, and the gold were honest gains, still, 
father, even so, you forget righteousness, and happiness, and wisdom. 
Money gives us none of these, but it might take them all away : dear 
father, let your loving Grace ask you, have you been better, happier, 
wiser, even from the wishing it so much?" 

"Daughter, daughter, I tell you plainly, he that gives me gold, gives 
me all things : I wish I found the crock the de — the angel, I mean, 
brought me." 

" O father," murmured Grace, " do not breathe the wicked wish ; even 
if you found it without any evil angel's help, would the gold be right- 
fully your own?" 

"Tush, girl!" said her mother; "get the gold, feed the children, and 
then to think about the right." 

" Ay, Grace, first drive away the toils and troubles of this life," added 
Roger, " and then one may try with a free mind to discover the comforts 
of religion." 

Poor Grace only looked up mournfully, and answered nothing. 



38 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE POACHER. 

A SUDDEN knock at the door here startled the whole party, and Mary 
Acton, bustling up, drew the bolt to let in — first, a lurcher, one Rover 
to wit, our gaunt ember-loving friend of Chapter II. ; secondly, Thomas 
Acton, full flush, who carried the old musket on his shoulder, and seemed 
to have something else under his smock ; and thirdly, Ben Burke, a per- 
sonage of no small consequence to us, and who therefore deserves some 
specific introduction. 

Big Ben, otherwise Black Burke, according to the friendship or the 
enmity of those who named him, was a huge, rough, loud, good-humoured, 
dare-devil sort of an individual, who lived upon what he considered com- 
mon rights. His dress was of the mongrel character, a well-imagined 
cross between a ploughman's and a sailor's ; the bottle-green frock of 
the former, pattern-stitched about the neck as ingeniously as if a tribe 
of Wisconsin squaws had tailored it — and mighty fishing boots, vast as 
any French postillion's, acting as a triton's tail to symbolize the latter: 
a red cotton handkerchief (dirty-red of course, as all things else were 
dirty, for cleanliness had little part in Ben), occupied just now the more 
native region of a halter ; and a rusty fur cap crowned the poacher ; I 
repeat it — crowned the poacher ; for in his own estimation, and that of 
many others too, Ben was, if not quite an emperor, at least an Agamem- 
non, a king of men, a natural human monarch ; in truth, he felt as much 
pride in the title Burke the Poacher (and with as great justice too, for 
aught I know), as Ali-Hamet-Ghee-the-Thug eastwards, or William-of- 
Normandy-the-Conqueror westwards, may be thought respectively to 
have cherished, on the score of their murderous and thievish surnames. 

There was no small good, after all, in poor Ben ; and a mountain of 
allowance must be flung into the scales to counterbalance his cleficien- 
cies. However coarse, and even profane, in his talk (I hope the gentle 
reader will excuse me alike for eliding a few elegant extracts from his 
common conversation, and also for reminding him characteristically, 
now and then, that Ben's language is not entirely Addisonian), however 
rough of tongue and dissonant in voice, Ben's heart will be found much 
about in the right place ; nay, I verily believe it has more of natural 



THE POACHER. 39 

justice, human kindness, and right sympathies in it, than are to be found 
in many of those hard and hollow cones that beat beneath the twenty- 
guinea waistcoats of a Burghardt or a Buckmaster. Ay, give me the 
fluttering inhabitant of Ben Burke's cowskin vest; it is worth a thousand 
of those stuffed and artificial denizens, whose usual nest is figured satin 
and cut velvet. 

Ben stole — true — he did not deny it ; but he stole naught but what he 
fancied was wrongfully withheld him : and, if he took from the rich, 
who scarcely knew he robbed them, he shared his savoury booty with 
the poor, and fed them by his daring. Like Robin Hood of old, he^ 
avenged himself on wanton wealth, and frequently redressed by it the 
wrongs of penury. Not that I intend to break a lance for either of 
them, nor to go any lengths in excusing ; slight extenuation is the limit 
for prudent advocacy in these cases. Robin Hood and Benjamin Burke 
were both of them thieves ; bold men — bad men, if any will insist upon 
the bad ; they sinned against law, and order, and Providence ; they dug 
rudely at the roots of social institutions; they spoke and acted in a 
dangerous fashion about rights of men and community of things. But 
set aside the statutes of Foresting and Venery, disfranchise pheasants, 
let it be a cogent thing that poverty and riches approach the golden 
mean somewhat less unequally, and we shall not find much of crimin- 
ality, either in Ben or Robin. 

For a general idea, then, of our poaching friend: — he is a gigantic, 
black-whiskered, humorous, ruddy mortal, full of strange oaths, which 
we really must not print, and bearded like the pard, and he tumbles in 
amongst our humble family party, with — 

"Bless your honest heart, Roger! what makes you look so sodden? 
I'm a lord, if your eyes a'n't as red as a hedge-hog's; and all the rest o' 
you, too; why, you seem to be pretty well merry as mutes. Ha! I see 
what it is," added Ben, pouring forth a benediction on their frugal supper ; 
"it's that precious belly-ache porridge that's a-giving you all the 'flensy. 
Tip it down the sink, dame, will you now ? and trust to me for better. 
Your Tom here, Roger, 's a lad o' mettle, that he is; ay, and that old 
iron o' yours as true as a compass ; and the pheasants would come to it, 
all the same as if they'd been loadstoned. Hei'e, dame, pluck the fowl, 
will you : drop 'em, Tom." — And Thomas Acton flung upon the table a 
couple of fine cock-pheasants. 

Roger, Mary, and Grace, who were well accustomed to Ben Burke's 
eloquent tirades, heard the end of this one with anxiety and silence; for 



40 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

Tom had never done the like before. Grace was first to expostulate, 
but was at once cut short by an oath from her brother, whose evident 
state of high excitement could not brook the semblance of reproof. 
Mary Acton's marketing glance was abstractedly fixed upon the actual 
corjms delicti; each fine plump bird, fuU-plumaged, young-spurred; 
yes, they were still warm, and would eat tender, so she mechanically 
began to pluck them ; while, as for poor downcast Roger, he remem- 
bered, with a conscience-sting that almost made him start, his stolen bit 
of money in the morning — so, how could he condemn? He only looked 
pityingly on Thomas, and sighed from the bottom of his heart. 

"Why, what's the matter now?" roared Ben; "one 'ud think we was 
bailiffs come to raise the rent, 'stead of son Tom and friendly Ben; hang 
it, mun, we aint here to cheat you out o' summut — no, not out o' peace 
o' mind neither; so, if you don't like luck, burn the fowls, or bury 'em, 
and let brave Tom risk limbo for nothing." 

"Oh, Ben!" murmured Grace, "why will you lead him astray? Oh, 
brother! brother! what have you done?" she said, sorrowfully. 

" Miss Grace," — her beauty always awed the poacher, and his rugged 
Caliban spirit bowed in reverence before her Ariel soul — "I wish I was 
as good as you, but can 't be : don 't condemn us, Grace ; leastways, first 
hear me, and then say where 's the harm or sin on it. Twelve hundred 
head o' game — I heard John Goi'se, the keeper, tell it at the Jerry — 
twelve hundred head were shot at t' other day 's battew : Sir John — no 
blame to him for it — killed a couple o' hundred to his own gun: and 
though they sent away a coachful, and gave to all who asked, and 
feasted themselves chuckfull, and fed the cats, and all, still a mound, 
like a haycock, o' them fine fat fowl, rotted in a mass, and were flung 
upon the dungpit. Now, Miss Grace, that ere salt pea-porridge a'n't 
nice, a'n't wholesome ; and, bless your pretty mouth, it ought to feed 
more sweetly. Look at Acton, isn't he half-starved. Is Tom, brave 
bov, full o' the fat o' the land? Who made fowl, I should like to know, 
and us to eat 'em? And where 's the harm or sin in brintjinfj down a 
bird? No, Miss, them ere beaks, dammem (beg humble pardon, Miss, 
indeed I won't again) them ere justices, as they call themselves, makes 
hard laws to hedge about their own pleasures; and if the poor man 
starves, he starves ; but if he stays his hunger with the free, wild birds 
of heaven, they prison him and punish him, and call him poacher." 

" Ben, those who make the laws, do so under God's permission ; and 
thev who break man's law, break His law." 



BEN BURKE'S STRANGE ADVENTURE. 41 

"Nonsense, child," — suddenly said Roger; hold your silly tongue. 
Do you mean to tell us. God's law and man's law are the same thing! 
No, Grace, I can't stomach that; God makes right, and man makes 
might — riches go one way, and poor men's wrong's another. Money, 
money 's the great law-maker, and a full purse frees him that has it, 
while it turns the jailor's key on the wretch that has it not: one of those 
wretches is the hopeless Roger Acton. Well, well," he added, after a 
despondent sigh, "say no more about it all ; that's right, good- wife — why, 
they do look plump. And if I can 't stomach Grace's text-talk there, 
I 'm sure I can the birds ; for I know what keeps crying cupboard 
lustily." 

It was a faint effort to be gay, and it only showed his gloom the denser. 
Truly, he has quite enough to make him sad ; but this is an unhealthy 
sadness : the mists of mammon-worship, rising up, meet in the mid aether 
of his mind, these lowering clouds of discontent : and the seeming calamity, 
that should be but a trial to his faith, looks too likely to wreck it. 

So, then, the embers wei'e raked up, the trivet stuck a-top, the savoury 
broil made ready ; and (all but Grace, who would not taste a morsel, 
but went up straight to bed) never had the Actons yet sate down before 
so rich a supper. 



CHAPTER X. 

BEN BURKE'S STRANGE ADYENTURE. 

" Take a pull, Roger, and pass the flask," was the cordial prescription 
of Ben Burke, intended to cure a dead silence, generated equally of 
eager appetites and self-accusing consciences ; so saying, he produced 
a quart wicker-bottle, which enshrined, according to his testimony, "sum- 
mut short, the right stuff, stinging strong, that had never seen the face 
of a wishy-washy 'ciseman." But Roger touched it sparingly, for the 
vaunted nectar positively burnt his swallow: till Ben, pulling at it 
heartily himself, by way of giving moral precept the full benefit of a 
good example, taught Roger not to be afraid of it, and so the flask 
was drained. 

Under such communicative influence, Acton's tale of sorrows and 
oppressions, we may readily believe, was soon made known; and as 

4* 



42 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

readily, that it moved Ben's indignant and gigantic sympathies to an 
extent of imprecation on the eyes, timbers, and psychological existence 
of Mr. Jennings, very little edifying. One thing, however, made amends 
for the license of his tongue ; the evident sincerity and warmth with 
which his coarse but kindly nature proffered instant aid, both offensive 
and defensive. 

"It's a black and burning shame. Honest Roger, and right shall have 
his own, somehow, while Big Ben has a heart in the old place, and a 
hand to help his friend." And the poacher having dealt his own broad 
breast a blow that would have knocked a tailor down, stretched out to 
Acton the huge hand that had inflicted it. 

"More than that, Roger — hark to this, man!" and, as he slapped his 
breeches pocket, there was the chink as of a mine of money shaken to 
its foundations: "hark to this, man! and more than hark, have! Here, 
good wife, hold your apron!" And he flung into her lap a handful 
of silver. ^ 

Roger gave a sudden shout of wonder, joy, and avarice : and then as 
instantaneously turning very pale, he slowly muttered, "Hush, Ben! is 
it bloody money?" and almost shrieked as he added, "and my poor boy 
Tom, too, with you ! God-a-mercy, mun ! how came ye by it ?" 

"Honestly, neighbour, leastways, middling honest: don't damp a good 
fellow's heart, when he means to serve you." 

"Tell me only that my boy is innocent! — and the money — yes, yes, 
I'll keep the money;" for his wife seemed to be pushing it from her at 
the thought. 

•^"I innocent, father! I never know'd till this minute that Ben had any 
blunt at all — did I, Ben? — and I only brought him and Rover here to 
sup, because I thought it neighbourly and kind-like." 

Poor Tom had till now been very silent : some how the pheasants lay 
heavy on his stomach. 

"Is it true, Ben, is it true? the lad isn't a thief, the lad isn't a mur- 
derer? Oh, God! Burke, tell me the truth! 

"Blockhead!" was the courteous reply, "what, not believe your own 
son? Why, neighbour Acton, look at the boy: would that frank-faced, 
open-hearted fellow do worse, think you, than Black Burke ? And would 
I, bad as I be, turn the bloody villain to take a man's life ? No, neighbour ; 
Ben kills game, not keepers : he sets his wire for a hare, but wouldn't go to 
pick a dead man's pocket. All that 's wrong in me, mun, the game-laws 
put there; but I'm neither burglar, murderer, highwayman — no, nor a 



I 



BEN BURKE'S STRANGE ADVENTURE. 43 

mean, sneaking thief; however the quality may think so, and even wish 
to drive me to it. Neither, being as I be no rogue, could I bear to live 
a fool; but I should be one, neighbour, and dub myself one too, if I 
didn't stoop to pick up money that a madman flings away." 

"Madman? pick up money? tell us how it was, Ben," interposed 
female curiosity. 

" Well, neighbours, listen : I was a-setting my night-lines round Pike 
Island yonder, more nor a fortnight back ; it was a dark night and a 
mizzling, or morning rather, 'twixt three and four; by the same token, 
I'd caught a power of eels. All at once, while I was fixing a trimmer, 
a punt came quietly up : as for me, Roger, you know I always wades it 
through the muddy shallow: well, I listens, and a chap creeps ashore — 
a mad chap, with never a tile to his head, nor a sole to his feet — and 
when I sings out to ax him his business, the lunatic sprung at me like a 
tiger : I didn't wish to hurt a little weak wretch like him, specially being 
past all sense, poor nat'ral ! so I shook him off at once, and held him 
, straight out in this here wice." [Ben's grasp could have cracked any 
cocoa-nut.] "He trembled like a wicked thing; and when I peered 
close into his face, blow me but I thought I'd hooked a white devil — no 
one ever see such a face: it was horrible too look at. 'What are you 
arter, mun?' says I; 'burying a dead babby?' says I. 'Give us hold 
here — I'm bless'd if I don't see though what you've got buckled up 
there.' With that, the little white fool — it's sartin he was mad — all on a 
sudden flings at my head a precious hard bundle, gives a horrid howl, 
jumps into the punt, and off again, afore I could wink twice. My head 
a'n't a soft un, I suppose; but when a lunatic chap hurls at it with all 
his might a barrow-load of crockery at once, it's little wonder that my 
right eye flinched a minute, and that my right hand rubbed my right 
eye; and so he freed himself, and got clear off". Rum start this, thinks 
I : but any how he 's flung away a summut, and means to give it me : 
what can it be? thinks I. Well, neighbours, if I didn't know the chap 
was mad afore, I was sartain of it now ; what do you think of a grown 
man — little enough, truly, but out of long coats too — sneaking by night 
to Pike Island, to count out a little lot of silver, and to guzzle twelve 
gallipots o' honey? There it was, all hashed up in an old shawl, a 
slimy mesh like birdlime : no wonder my eye was a leetle blackish, 
when half-a-dozen earthern crocks wei'e broken against it. I was 
angered enough, I tell you, to think any man could be such a fool as to 
bring honey there to eat or to hide — when at once I spied summut red 



44 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

among the mess ; and what should it be but a pretty little China house, 
red-brick-like, with a split in the roof for droppings, and ticketed 
'Savings-bank:' the chink o' that bank you hears now: and the bank 
itself is in the pond, now I 've cleaned the till out." 

" Wonderful sure ! But what did you do with the honey, Ben ? — some 
of the pots wasn't broke," urged notable Mrs. Acton. 

" Oh, burn the slimy stuff, I warn't going to put my mouth out o' taste o' 
bacca, for a whole jawful of tooth-aches: I '11 tell you, dame, what I did 
with them ere crocks, wholes, and parts. There's never a stone on Pike 
Island, it's too swampy, and I'd forgot to bring my pocketful, as usual. 
The heaviest fish, look you, always lie among the sedge, hereabouts and 
thereabouts, and needs stirring, as your Tom knows well; so I chucked 
the gallipots fur from me, right and left, into the shallows, and thereby 
druv the pike upon my hooks. A good night's work I made of it too, 
say nothing of the Savings-bank ; forty pound o' pike and twelve of eel 
warn't bad pickings." 

"Dear, it was a pity though to fling away the honey ; but what became 
of the shawl, Ben?" Perhaps Mrs. Acton thought of looking for it. 

"Oh, as for that, I was minded to have sunk it, with its mess of sweet- 
meats and potsherds ; but a thought took me, dame, to be 'conomical for 
once : and I was half sorry too that I'd flung away the jars, for I began 
to fancy your little uns might ha' liked the stuff"; so I dipped the clout 
like any washerwoman, rinshed, and squeezed, and washed the mess 
away, and have worn it round my waist ever since ; here, dame, I 
haven't been this way for a while afore to-night; but I meant to ask you 
if you 'd like to have it; may be 'tan't the fashion though." 

" Good gracious, Ben ! why that 's Mrs. Quarles's shawl, I 'd swear to 
it among a hundred ; Sarah Stack, at the Hall, once took and wore it, 
when Mrs. Quarles was ill a-bed, and she and our Thomas walked to 
church together. Yes — green, edged with red, and — I thought so — a 
yellow circle in the middle ; here 's B. Q., for Bridget Quarles, in black 
cotton at the corner. Lackapity! if they'd heard of all this at the 
Inquest ! I tell you what. Big Ben, it's kindly meant of you, and so 
thank you heartily, but that shawl would bring us into trouble ; so please 
take it yourself to the Hall, and tell 'em fairly how you came by it." 

"I don't know about that Poll Acton; perhaps they might ask me for 
the Saving-bank, too — eh, Roger!" 

"No, no, wife ; no, it'll never do to lose the money ! let a bygone be a 
bygone, and don't disturb the old woman in her grave. As to the shawl, 



SLEEP. 45 

if it's like to be a tell-tale, in my mind, this hearth's the safest 
place for it." 

So he flung it on the fire ; there was a shrivelling, smouldering, guilty 
sort of blaze, and the shawl was burnt. 

Roger Acton, you are falling quickly as a shooting star; already is 
your conscience warped to connive, for lucre's sake, at some one's secret 
crimes. You had better, for the moral of the matter, have burnt your 
right hand, as Scaevola did, than that shawl. Beware ! your sin will 
bring its punishment. 



CHAPTER XL 

SLEEP. 

Grace, in her humble truckle-bed, lay praying for her father; not 
about his trouble, though that was much, but for the spots of sin she 
could discern upon his soul. 

Alas! an altered man was Roger Acton ; almost since morning light, 
the leprosy had changed his very nature. The simple-minded Christian, 
toiling in contentment for his daily bread, cheerful for the passing day, 
and trustful for the coming morrow, this fair state was well-nigh faded 
away ; wjiile a bitterness of feeling against (in one word) GOD — against 
unequal partialities in providence, against things as they exist, and this 
world's inexplicable government — was gnawing at his very heart-strings, 
and cankering their roots by unbelief. It is a speedy process — throw 
away faith with its trust for the past, love for the present, hope for the 
future — and you throw away all that makes sorrow bearable, or joy lovely ; 
the best of us, if God withheld his help, would apostatize like Peter, ere 
the cock crew thrice ; and, at times, that help has wisely been withheld, 
to check presumptuous thoughts, and teach how true it is that the crea- 
ture depends on the Creator. Just so we suffer a wilful little child, who 
is tottering about in leading-strings, to go alone for a minute, and have a 
gentle fall. And just so Roger here, deserted for a time of those 
angelic ministrations whose efficiency is proved by godliness and meek- 
ness, by patience and content, is harassed in his spirit as by harpies, 
by selfishness and pride, and fretful doubtings ; by a grudging hate of 



46 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

labour, and a fiery lust of gold. Temptation comes to teach a weak 
man that he was fitted for his station, and his station made for him ; that 
fulfilment of his ignorant desires will only make his case the worse, 
and that 

Providence alike is wise 

In what he gives and what denies. 

Meanwhile, gentle Grace, on her humble truckle-bed, is full of pray- 
ers and tears, uneasily listening to the indistinct and noisy talk, and 
hearing, now and then, some louder oath of Ben's that made her shud- 
der. Yes, she heard, too, the smashing sound, when the poacher flung 
the money down, and she feared it was a mug or a plate — no slight 
domestic loss ; and she heard her father's strange cry, when he gave that 
wondering shout of joyous avarice, and she did not know what to fear. 
Was he ill ? or crazed ! or worse — fallen into bad excesses ? How she 
prayed for him ! 

Poor Ben, too, honest-hearted Ben ; she thought of him in charity, and 
pleaded for his good before the Throne of Mercy. Who knows but 
Heaven heard that saintly virgin prayer? There is love in Heaven yet 
for poor Ben Bnrke. 

And if she prayed for Ben, with what an agony of deep-felt intercts- 
sion did she plead for Thomas Acton, that own only brother of hers, just 
a year the younger to endear him all the more, her playmate, care, and 
charge, her friend and boisterous protector. The many sorrowing hours 
she had spent for his sake, and the thousand generous' actions he had 
done for hers ! Could she forget how the stripling fought for her that 
day, when rude Joseph Green would help her over the style ? Could 
she but remember how slily he had put aside, for more than half a year, 
a little heap of copper earnings — weeding-money, and errand-money, 
and harvest-money — and then bounteously spent it all at once in giving 
her a Bible on her birth-day? And when, coming across the fields with 
him after leasing, years ago now, that fierce black bull of Squire Ryle's 
was rushing down upon us both, how bravely did the noble boy attack 
him with a stake, as he came up bellowing, and make the dreadful mon- 
ster turn away ! Ah ! I looked death in the face then, but for thee, my 
brother ! Remember him, my God, for good ! 

" Poor father ! poor father ! Well, I am resolved upon one thing : I '11 
go, with Heaven's blessing, to the Hall myself, and see Sir John, to-mor- 
row; he shall hear the truth, for" And so Grace fell asleep. 



SLEEP. 47 

Roger, when he went to bed, came to similar conclusions. He would 
speak up boldly, that he would, without fear or favour. Ben's most 
seasonable bounty, however to be questioned on the point of right, made 
him feel entirely independent, both of bailiffs and squires, and he had 
now no anxieties, but rather hopes, about to-morrow. He was as good 
as they, with money in his pocket ; so he 'd down to the Hall, and face 
the baronet himself, and blow his bailiff out o' water : that should be his 
business by noon. Another odd idea, too, possessed him, and he could 
not sleep at night for thinking of it: it was a foolish fancy, but the 
dream might have put it in his head : what if one or other of those hon- 
ey-jars, so flung here and there among the rushes, were in fact another 
sort of " Savings-bank " — a crock of gold ? It was a thrilling thought 
— his very dream, too ; and the lot of shillings, and the shawl — ay, and 
the inquest, and the rumours how that Mrs. Quarles had come to her end 
unfairly, and no hoards found — and — and the honey-pots missing. Ha ! 
at any rate he'd have a search to-morrow. No bugbear now should 
hinder him ; money 's money ; he 'd ask no questions how it got there. 
His own bit of garden lay the nearest to Pike Island, and who knows 
but Ben might have slung a crock this way? It wouldn't do to ask him, 
though — for Burke might look himself, and get the crock — was Roger's 
last and selfish thought, before he fell asleep. 

As to Mrs. Acton, she, poor woman, had her own thoughts, fearful 
ones, about that shawl, and ^en's mysterious adventure. No cloudy 
love of mammon had overspread her mind, to hide from it the hideous- 
ness of murder; in her eyes, blood was terrible, and not the less so that 
it covered gold. She remembered at the inquest — be sure she was there 
among the gossips — the facts, so little taken notice of till now, the keys 
in the cupboard, where the honey-pots were not, and how Jonathan 
Floyd had seen something on the lake, and the marks of a man's hand 
on the throat ; and, God forgive her for saying so, but Mr. Jennings was 
a little, white-faced man. How wrong was it of Roger to have burnt 
that shawl ! how dull of Ben not to have suspected something ! but then 
the good fellow suspects nobody, and, I dare say, now doesn't know my 
thoughts. But Roger does, more shame for him; or why burn the 
shawl? Ah! thought she, with all the gossip rampart in her breast, if 
I could only have taken it to the Hall myself, what a stir I should have 
caused ! Yes, she would have reaped a mighty field of glory by origin- 
ating such a whirlwind of inquiries and surmises. Even now, so 
attractive was the mare's nest, she would go to the Hall by morning 



48 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

and tell Sir John himself all about the burnt shawl, and Pike Island, 

and the galli And so she fell fast asleep. 

With respect to Ben, Tom, and Rover, a well-matched triad, as any 
Isis, Horus, and Nepthys, they all flung themselves promiscuously on 
the hard floor beside the hearth, " basked at the fire their hairy strength," 
and soon were snoring away beautifully in concert, base, tenor, and 
treble, like a leash of glee-singers. No thoughts troubled them, either 
of mammon or murder: so long before the meditative trio up-stairs, they 
had set a good example, and fallen asleep. 



CHAPTER XII. 

LOVE. 

With the earliest peep of day arose sweet Grace, full of cheerful 
hope, and prayer, and happy resignation. She had a great deal to do 
that morning ; for, innocent girl, she had no notion that it was quite por;- 
sible to be too early at the Hall ; her only fear was being too late. 
Then there were all the household cares to see to, and the dear babes 
to dress, and the place to tidy up, and b^akfast to get ready, and, any 
how, she could not be abroad till half-past eight: so, to her disma}-, it 
must be past nine before ever she can see Sir John. Let us follow her a 
little: for on this important day we shall have to take the adventur. s 
of our labourer's family one at a time. 

By twenty minutes to nine, Grace had contrived to bustle on her things, 
give the rest the slip, and be tripping to the Hall. It is nearly two miles 
off, as we already know ; and Grace is such a pretty creature that \^e 
can clearly do no better than employ our time thitherward by taking a 
peep at her. 

Sweet Grace Acton, we will not vex thy blushing maiden modesty by 
elaborate details of form, and face, and feature. Perfect womanhood 
at fair eighteen : let that fill all the picture up with soft and swelling 
charms; no wadding, or padding, or jigot, or jupe — but all those grace- 
ful undulations are herself: no pearl-powder, no carmine, no borrowed 
locks, no musk, or ambergris — but all those feeble helps of meretricious 
art excelled and superseded by their just originals in nature. It will 



LOVE. 



49 



not do to talk, as a romancer may, of velvet cheeks and silken tresses; 
or invoke, to the aid of our inadequate description, roses, and swans, and 
peaches, and lilies. Take the simple village beauty as she is. Did you 
ever look on prettier lips or sweeter eyes — more glossy natural curls upon 
a whiter neck? And how that little red-riding-hood cloak, and the simple 
cottage hat tied down upon her cheeks, and the homely russet gown, all 
too short for modern fashions, and the white, well-turned ankle, and the tidy 
little leather shoe, and the bunch of snow drops in her tucker, and the 
neat mittens contrasting darkly with her fair, bare arms — pretty Grace, 
how well all these become thee ! There, trip along, with health upon 
thy cheek, and hope within thy heart ; who can resist so eloquent a 
pleader? Haste on, haste on : save thy father in his trouble, as thou hast 
blest him in his sin — this rustic lane is to thee the path of duty — Heaven 
speed thee on it ! 

More slowly now, and with more anxious thoughts, more heart-weak- 
ness, more misgiving — Grace approacheth the stately mansion: and 
when she timidly touched the " Servants' " bell, for she felt too lowly for 
the " Visiters'," — and when she heard how terribly loud it was, how lonjj 
it rung, and what might be the issue of her — wasn't it ill-considered? — 
errand — the poor girl almost fainted at the sound. 

As she leaned unconsciously for strength against the door, it opened 
on a sudden, and Jonathan Floyd, in mute amazement, caught her in 
his arms. 

"Why, Grace Acton! what's the matter with you?" Jonathan knew 
Grace well ; they had been at dame's-school together, and in after years 
attended the same Sunday class at church. There had been some talk 
among the gossips about Jonathan and Grace, and ere now folks had 
been kind enough to say they would make a pretty couple. And folks 
were right, too, as well as kind : for a fine young fellow was Jonathan 
Floyd, as any duchess's footman; tall, well built, and twenty-five; 
Antinous in a livery. Well to do, withal, though his wages don't come 
straight to him ; for, independently of his place — and the baronet likes 
him for his good looks and proper manners — he is Farmer Floyd's only 
son, on the hill yonder, as thriving a small tenant as any round abouts; 
and he is proud of his master, of his blue and silver uniform, of old 
Hurstley, and of all things in general, except himself. 

"But what on earth's the matter, Grace?" he was obliged to repeat, 
for the dear girl's agitation was extreme. 

"Jonathan, can I see the baronet?" 
D 6 



50 T II E -C R O C K O F G O L D . 

"What, at nine iu the morning, Grace Acton ! Call again at two, and 
you may find him getting up. He hasn't been three hours a-bed yet, 
and there 's nobody about but Sarah Stack and me. I wisli those Lun- 
nun sparks would but leave the place: they do his honour no good, I'm 
thinking." 

"Not till two!" was the slow and mournful ejaculation. What a 
damper to her buoyant hopes : and Providence had seen fit to give her 
ill-success. Is it so? Prosperity may come in other shapes. 

"Why, Grace," suddenly said Floyd, in a very nervous way, "what 
makes you call upon my master in this tidy trim?" 

"To save my father," answered Innocence. 

" How ? why ? Oh don't, Grace, don't ! I '11 save him — I will indeed 
— what is it? Oh, don't, don't !" 

For the poor affectionate fellow conjured on the spot the black vision 
of a father saved by a daughter's degradation. 

"Don't, Jonathan? — it's my duty, and God will bless me in it. That 
cruel Mr. Jennings has resolved upon our ruin, and I wished to tell Sir 
John the truth of it." 

At this hearing, Jonathan brightened up, and glibly said, "Ah, indeed, 
Jennings is a trouble to us all : a sad life I 've led of it this year past ; 
and I 've paid Him pretty handsomely too, to let me keep the place : 
while, as for John Page and the grooms, and Mr. Coachman and the 
helpers, they don't touch much o' their wages on quarter-day, I know," 

"Oh, but we — we are ruined! ruined! Father is forbidden now to 
labour for our bread." And then with many tears she told her tale. 

"Stop, Miss Grace," suddenly said Jonathan, for her beauty and elo- 
quence transformed the cottager into a lady in his eyes, and no wonder ; 
"pray, stop a minute, Miss — please to take a seat; I sha'n't be gone 
an instant." 

And the good-hearted fellow, whose eyes had long been very red, 
broke away at a gallop ; but he was back again almost as soon as gone, 
panting like a post-horse. " Oh, Grace ! don't be angry ! do forgive me 
what I am going to do." 

"Do, Jonathan?" and the beauty involuntarily started — "I hope it's 
nothing wrong," she added, solemnly. 

"Whether right or wrong, Grace, take it kindly; you have often bade 
me read my Bible, and I do so many times both for the sake of it and 
you ; ay, and meet with many pretty sayings in it : forgive me if I act 
on one — ' It is more blessed to give tlian to receive.' " With that, he 



LOVE. 51 

thrust into her hand a brass-topped, red-leather purse, stuffed with money. 
Generous fellow ! all the little savings, that had heretofore escaped the 
prying eye and filching grasp of Simon Jennings. There was some 
little gold in it, more silver, and a lot of bulky copper. 

"Dear Jonathan!" exclaimed Grace, quite thrown off her guard of 
maidenly reserve, "this is too kind, too good, too much; indeed, indeed 
it is : I cannot take the purse." And her bright eyes overflowed again. 

" Well, girl," said Jonathan, gulping down an apple in his throat, "I — 
I won't have the money, that's all. Oh, Grace, Grace!" he burst out 
earnestly, "let me be the blessed means of helping you in trouble — I 
would die to do it, Grace; indeed I would!" 

The dear girl fell upon his neck, and they wept together like two lov- 
ing little sisters. 

"Jonathan" — her duteous spirit was the first to speak — "forgive this 
weakness of a foolish woman's heart : I will not put away the help 
which God provides us at your friendly hands : only this, kind brother 
— let me call you brother — keep the purse ; if my father pines for want 
of work, and the babes at home lack food, pardon my boldness if I take 
the help you offer. Meanwhile, God in heaven bless you, Jonathan, as 
He will !" 

And she turned to go away. 

"Won't you take a keepsake, Grace — one little token? I wish I had 
any thing here but money to give you for my sake." 

"It would even be ungenerous in me to refuse you, brother; one 
little piece will do." 

Jonathan fumbled up something in a crumpled piece of paper, and 
said sobbingly — "Let it be this new half-crown, Grace: I won't say, 
keep it always ; only when you want to use that and more, I humbly 
ask you '11 please come to me." 

Now a more delicate, a more unselfish act, was never done by man : 
along with the half-crown he had packed up two sovereigns ! and thereby 
not only escaped thanks, concealed his own beneficence, and robbed his 
purse of half its little store; but actually he was, by doing so, depriving 
himself for a month, or maybe more, of a visit from Grace Acton. Had 
it been only half-a-crown, and want had pinched the family (neither Grace 
nor Jonathan could guess of Ben Burke's bounty, and for all they knew 
Roger had not enough for the morrow's meals) — had poverty come in 
like an armed man, and stood upon their threshold a grim sentinel — 
doubtless she must have run to him within a day or two. How sweet 



62 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

would it have been to have kept her coming day by day, and to a com- 
moner aifection how excusable! but still how selfish, how unlike the lib- 
eral and honourable feeling that filled the manly heart of Jonathan Floyd ! 
It was a noble act, and worthy of a long parenthesis. 

If Grace Acton had looked back as she hurried down the avenue, she 
would have seen poor Jonathan still watching her with all his eyes till 
she was out of sight. Perhaps, though, she might have guessed it — 
there is a sympathy in these things, the true animal magnetism — and I 
dare say that was the very reason why slie did not once turn her head. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DISCOVERY, 

Roger Acton had not slept well ; had not slept at all till nearly break 
of day, except in the feverish fashion of half dream half revery. There 
were thick-coming fancies all night long about what Ben had said and 
done : and more than once Roger had thought of the expediency of 
getting up, to seek without delay the realization of that one idea which 
now possessed him — a crock of gold. When he put together one thing 
and another, he considered it almost certain that Ben had flung away 
among the lot no mere honey-pot, but perhaps indeed a money-pot : 
Burke hadn't half the cunning of a child ; more fool he, and maybe so 
much the better for me, thought money-bitten, selfish Roger. Thus, in 
the night's hot imaginations, he resolved to find the spoil ; to will, was 
then to do : to do, was then to conquer. However, Nature's sweet restorer 
came at last, and, when he woke, the idea had sobered down — last night's 
fancies were preposterous. So, it was with a heavy heart he got up later 
than his wont — no work before him, nothing to do till the afternoon, when 
he might see Sir John, except it be to dig a bit in his little marshy garden. 
When Grace ran to the Flail, Roger was going forth to dig. 

Now, I know quite well that the reader is as fully aware as I am, what 
is about to happen ; but it is impossible to help the matter. If the heading 
of this chapter tells the truth, a "discovery" of some sort is inevitable. 
Let us preliminarize a thought or two, if thereby we can hang some 
shadowy veil of excuse over a too naked mystery. First and foremost, 



THE DISCOVERY. 53 

truth is strange, stranger, et-ceiera; and this et-cetera, pregnant as one 
of Lyttleton's, intends to add the superlative strangest, to the comparative 
stranger of that seldom-quoted sentiment. To every one of us, in the 
course of our lives, something quite as extraordinary has befallen more 
than once. What shall we say of omens, warnings, forebodings? What 
of the most curious runs of luck; the most whimsical freaks of fortune; 
the unaccountable things that happen round us daily, and no one marvels 
at them, till he reads of them in print? Even as Macpherson, ingenious, 
if not ingenuous, gathei'ed Ossian from the lips of Highland hussifs, and 
made the world with modern Attila to back it, wonder at the stores that 
are hived on old wives' tongues; even so might any other literary black- 
smith hammer from the ore of common gossip a regular Vulcan's net of 
superstitious "facts." Never yet was uttered ghost story, that did not 
breed four others ; every one at table is eager to record his, or his aunt's, 
experience in that line ; and the mass of queer coincidences, inexplicable 
incidents, indubitable seeings, hearings, doings, and sufferings, which you 
and I have heard of in this popular vein of talk, would amply excuse 
the wildest fictionist for the most extravagant adventure — the more 
improbable, the nearer truth. Talk of the devil, said our ancestors — • 
let "&c." save us from the consequence. Think of any thing vehe- 
mently, and it is an even chance it happens : be confident, you conquer ; 
be obstinate in willing, and events shall bend humbly to their lord : nay, 
dream a dream, and if you recollect it in the morning, and it bother you 
next day, and you cannot get it out of your head for a week, and the 
matter positively haunt you, ten to one but it finds itself or makes itself 
fulfilled, some odd day or other. Just so, doubtless, will it prove to be 
with Roger's dream : I really cannot help the matter. 

Again, it is more than likely that the reader is clever, very clever, 
and that any attempts at concealment would be merely futile. From 
the first page he has discovered who is the villain, and who the victim : 
the title alone tells him of the golden hinge on which the story turns: 
he can look through stone walls, if need be, or mesmerically see, with- 
out making use of eyes : no peep-holes for him, as for Pyramus and 
Thisbe : no initiation requisite for any hidden mysteries; all ai'cana are 
revealed to him, every sanctum is a highway. No art of mortal pen 
can defeat this mischief of acuteness : character is character ; oaks 
grow of acorns, and the plan of a life may be detected in a microscopic 
speech. The career of Mr. Jennings is as much predestined by us to 
iniquity, from the first intimation that he never makes excuse, as honest 

6* 



54 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

Roger is to trouble and temptation from the weary eifort wherewithal he 
woke. And, even now, pretty Grace and young Sir John, the reader 
thinks that he can guess at nature's consequence ; while, with respect to 
Roger's going forth to dig this morning, he sees it straight before him, 
need not ask for the result. Well, if the shrewd reader has the eye of 
Lieuenhoeck, and can discern, cradled in the small triangular beech- 
mast, a noble forest-tree, with silvery trunk, branching arms, and dark- 
green foliage, he deserves to be complimented indeed, for his own keen 
skill; but, at the same time. Nature will not hurry herself for him, but 
will quietly educe results which he foreknew — or thought he did — a 
century ago. And is there not the highest Art in this unveiled sim- 
plicity : to lead the reader onwards by a straight road, with the setting 
sun a-blaze at the end of it, knowing his path, knowing its object, yet still 
borne on with spirits unexhausted and unflagging foot? Trust me, there 
is better praise in this, than in dazzling the distracted glance with a 
perpetual succession of luminous fire-flies, and dragging your fair novel- 
reader, harried and excited, through the mazes of a thousand incidents. 
Thirdly, and lastly, in this prefatorial say, there is to be considered 
that inevitable defeator of all printed secrets — impatience. Nothing is 
easier, nothing commoner (most wise people do it, whose fate is, that 
they must keep up with the race of current publication, and therefore 
must keep down the still-increasing crowd of authorial creations), nothing 
is more venial, more laudable, than to read the last chapter first; and 
so, finding out all mysteries at once, to save one's self a vast deal of 
unnecessary trouble. And, for mere tale-telling, this may be oufficient. 
AVhat need to burden memory with imaginary statements, or to weary 
out one's sympathies on trite fictitious woes? — come to the catastrophe 
at once : the uncle hanged ; the heir righted ; the heroine, an orange- 
flowered bride ; and the white-headed grandmother, after all her wrongs, 
winding up the story with a prudent moral. Now, this may all be very 
well with histories that merely carry a sting in the tail, whose moral is 
the warning of the rattlesnake, and whose hot-exciting interest is posted 
with the scorpion's venom. They are the Dragon of Wantley, with 
one caudal point — a barbed termination: we, like Moore of Moore Hall, 
all point, covered with spikes : every where we boast ourselves an ethical 
hedge-hog, all-over-armed with keen morals — a Rumour painted full of 
tongues, echoing all around with revealing of secrets. The feelings of 
our humble hero, altered Roger Acton, are worthy to be studied by the 
great, to be sifted by the rich ; and Grace's simple tongue may teach the 



THEDISCOVERY. 55 

sage, for its wisdom cometh from above ; and Jonathan, for all his shoulder- 
knot and smart cockade, is worthy to give lessons to his master: that 
master, also, is far better than you think him ; and poor Burke too, for 
true humanity's sake : so we get a mint of morals, set aside the story. 
It is not raw material, but the workmanship, that gives its value to the 
flowered damask; our grand-dames' sumptuous taffeties and stand-alone 
brocades are but spun silk — worms' interiors ; the fairest statue is intrin- 
sically but a mass of clumsy stone, until, indeed, the sculptor has rough- 
hewn it, and shaped it, and chiselled it, and finished all the touches with 
sand-paper. This story of ' The Crock of Gold^ purports to be a Dutch 
picture, as becometh boors, their huts, their short and simple annals; so 
that, after its moralities, the mass of minute detail is the only thing that 
gives it any value. 

Now, whilst all of you have been yawning through these egotistic 
phrases, Roger has been digging in his garden ; there he is, pecking away 
at what once was the celery-bed, but now are fallow trenches; celery, 
as we all know, is a water-loving plant, doing best in marshy-land, so 
no wonder the trenches open on the sedge, and the muddy shallow oppo- 
site Pike Island puddles up to them. There needs be no suspense, no 
mystery at all ; Roger's dream had clearly sent him thither, for he should 
not have levelled those trenches yet awhile, it was a little too soon — bad 
husbandry ; and, barring the appearance of a devil, Roger's dream came 
true. Yes, under the roots of a clump of bullrush, he lifted out with 
his spade — a pot of Narbonne honey ! 

When first he spied the pot, his heart was in his mouth — it must be 
gold, and with tottering knees he raised the precious burden. But, 
woful disappointment! the word "Honey," with plenty of French and 
Fortnum on another pasted label, stared him in the face ; it was sweet 
and slimy too about the neck ; there was no sort of jingle when he 
shook the crock; what though it be heavy? — honey's heavy; and it 
was tied over quite in a common way with pig's bladder, and his clumsy 
trembling fingers could not undo that knot; and thus, with a miserable 
sense of cheated poverty, he threw it down beside the path, and would, 
perhaps, have flung it right away in sheer disgust, but for the reflection 
that the little ones might like it. Once, indeed, the glorious doubt of 
maybe gold came back upon his mind, and he lifted up the spade to 
smash the baffling pot, and so make sure of what it might contain ; — make 
sure, eh ? why, you would only lose the honey, whispered domestic econ- 
omy. So he left the jar to be opened by his wife when he should go in 



56 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

k 

CHAPTER XIV. 

JONATHAN'S STORE. 

And where has Mrs, Acton been all this morning? Off to the Hall, 
very soon after Grace had got away ; and she rung at the side entrance, 
hard by the kitchen, most fortunately caught Sarah Stack about, and 
had a good long gossip with her; telling her, open-mouthed, all about 
Ben Burke having found a shawl of Mrs. Quarles's on the island ; and 
how, it being very rotten, yes, and smelling foul, Ben had been fool 
enough to burn it; what a pity! how could the shawl have got there? 
if it only could ha' spoken what it knew ! And the bereaved gossips 
mourned together over secrets undivulged, and their evidence destroyed. 
.\s to the crockery, for a miraculous once in life, Mrs. Acton held her 
tongue about a thing she knew, and said not a syllable concerning it. 
Roger would be mad to lose the money. Just at parting with her friend, 
Mary Acton was going out by the wrong door, through the hall, but 
luckily did no more than turn the handle; or she never could have 
escaped bouncing in upon t'le lovers' interview, and thereby occasioning 
a chaos of confusion. For, be it whispered, the step-dame was not a 
little jealous of her ready-made daughter's beauty, persisted in calling 
her a child, and treated her any thing but kindly and sisterly, as her 
full-formed woman's loveliness might properly have looked for. Only 
imagine, if the Hecate had but seen Jonathan's lit-up looks, or Grace's 
down-cast blushes; for it really slipped my observation to record that 
there were blushes, and probably some cause for them when the keep- 
sake was given and accepted ; only conceive if the step-mother had 
heard Jonathan's afterward soliloquy, when he was watching pretty Grace 
as she tripped away — and how mucTi he seemed to think of her eyes and 
eye-lashes! I am reasonably fearful, had she heard and seen all this — 
Poll Acton's nails might have possibly drawn blood from the cheeks of 
Jonathan Floyd. As it was, the little god of love kindly warded from 
his votaries the coming of so crabbed an antagonist. 

Grace has now reached home again, blessing her overruling stars to 
have escaped notice so entirely both in going and returning; for the 
mother was hard at washing near the well, having got in half an hour 
before, and father has not yet left off digging in his garden. So she 



JONATHAN'S STORE. 57 

cTftpt up stairs quietly, put away her Sunday best, and is just dropping 
on her knees beside her truckle-bed, to speak of all her sorrows to her 
Heavenly friend, and to thank him for the kindness He had raised her 
in an earthly one. She then, with no small trepidation, took out of her 
tucker, just below those withered snow-drops, the crumpled bit of paper 
that held Jonathan's parting gift. It was surprising how her tucker 
heaved ; she could hardly get at the parcel. She wanted to look at that 
half-crown; not that she feared it was a bad one, or was curious about 
coins, or felt any pleasure in possessing such a sum : but there was such 
a don't-know-what connected with that new half-crown, which made her 
long to look at it ; so she opened the paper — and found its golden fellows ! 
O noble heart! kind, generous, unselfish — yes, beloved Jonathan! 
But what is she to do with the sovereigns? Keep them? No, she can- 
not keep them, however precious in her sight as proofs of deep affection ; 
but she will call as soon as possible, and give them back, and insist upon 
his taking them, and keeping them too — for her, if no otherwise. And 
the dear innocent girl was little aware herself how glad she felt of the 
excuse to call so soon again at Hurstley. 

Meantime, for safety, she put the money in her Bible. 

What hallowed gold was that? Gained by honest industry, saved by 
youthful prudence, given liberally and unasked, to those who needed, 
and could not pay again ; with a delicate consideration, an heroic essay 
at concealment, a voluntary sacrifice of self, of present pleasure, passion, 
and affection. And there it lies, the little store, hidden up in Grace's 
Bible. She has prayed over it, thanked over it, interceded over it, for 
herself, for it, for others. How different, indeed, from ordinaiy gold, 
from common sin-bought mammon ; how different from that unblest store, 
which Roger Acton covets ; how purified from meannesses, and separate 
from harms! This is of that money, the scarcest coins of all the world, 
endued with all good properties in heaven and in earth, whereof it had 
been written, "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord 
of hosts." 

Such alone are truly riches — well-earned, well-saved, well-sanctified, 
well-spent. The wealthiest of European capitalists — the Croesus of 
modern civilization — may be but a pauper in that better currency, 
whereof a sample has been shown in the store of Jonathan Floyd. 



5a. THECROCKOFGOLD. 

CHAPTER XV. 

ANOTHER DISCOVERY, AND THE EARNEST OP GOOD THTNGS. 

"Dame, hei'e's one o' Ben's gallipots he flung away: it's naught but 
honey, dame — marked so — no crock of gold; don't expect it; no such 
thing ; luck like that isn't for such as me : though, being as it is, the 
babes may like it, with their dry bread : open it, good-wife : I hope the 
water mayn't ha' spoilt it." 

The notable Mary Acton produced certain scissors, hanging from her 
pocket by a tape, and cut a knot, which to Roger had been Gordian's. 

" Why, it's bran, Acton, not honey; look here, will you." She tilted 
it up, and, along with a cloud of saw-dust, dropped out a heavy hail-storm 
of — little bits of leather! 

"Hallo? what's that?" said Roger, eagerly: "it's gold, gold, I'll b. 
sworn!" It was so. 

Every separate bit of money, whatever kind of coins they were, had 
been tidily sewn up in a shred of leather; remnants of old gloves of all 
colours ; and the Narbonne jar contained six hundred and eighty-seven of 
them. These, of course, were hastily picked up from the path whereon 
they had first fallen, were counted out at home, and the glittering con- 
tents of most of those little leather bags ripped up were immediately 
discovered. Oh dear! oh dear! such a sight! Guineas find half-guin- 
eas, sovereigns and half-sovereigns, quite a little hill of bright, clean, 
prettily-figured gold. 

"Hip, hip, hooray!" shouted Roger, in an ecstacy ; "Hurrah, huri'ah, 
hurrah !" and in the madness of his joy, he executed an extravagant pas 
seul ; up went his hat, round went his heels, and he capered awkwardly 
like a lunatic giraffe. 

" Here 's an end to all our troubles, Poll : we 're as good as gentle-folks 
now; catch me a-calling at the Hall, to bother about Jennings and Sir 
John : a fig for bailiffs, and baronets, parsons, and prisons, and all," and 
again he roai'ed Hooray ! "I tell you what though, old 'ooman, we must 
just try the taste of our glorious golden luck, before we do any thing 
else. Bide a bit, wench, and hide the hoard till I return. I 'm off to the 
Bacchus's Arms, and I'll bring you some stingo in a minute, old gal." 
So off he ran hot-foot, to get an earnest of the blessing of his crock of gold. 



ANOTHER DISCOVERY. 59 

The minute that was promised to produce the stingo, proved to be rather 
of a lengthened character; it might, indeed, have been a minute, or the 
fraction of one, in the planet Herschel, whose year is as long as eighty- 
five of our Terra's, but according to Greenwich calculatiorf, it was 
nearer like two hours. 

The little Tom and Jerry shop, that rejoiced in the classical heraldry 
of Bacchus's Arms, had been startled from all conventionalities by the 
unwonted event of the demand, "change for a sovereign?" and when it 
was made known to the assembled conclave that Roger Acton was the for- 
tunate possessor, that even assumed an appearance positively miraculous. 

"Why, honest Roger, how in the world could you ha' come by that?" 
was the troublesome inquiry of Dick the Tanner. 

" Well, Acton, you 're sharper than I took you foi*, if you can squeeze 
gold out of bailiff Jennings," added Solomon Snip; and Roger knew no 
better way of silencing their tongues, than by profusely drenching them 
in liquor. So he stood treat all round, and was forced to hobanob with 
each ; and when that was gone, he called for more to keep their curiosity 
employed. Now, all this caused delay ; and if Mary had been waiting 
for the "stingo," she would doubtless have had reasonable cause for 
anger and impatience : however, she, for her part, was so pleasantly 
occupied, like Prince Arthur's Queen, in counting out the money, that, 
to say the truth, both lord and liquor were entirely forgotten. 

But another cause that lengthened out the minute, was the embarrassing 
business of where to find the change. Bacchus's didn't chalk up trust, 
where hard money was flung upon the counter; but all the accumulated 
wealth of Bacchus's high-priest, Tom Swipey, and of the seven worship- 
pers now drinking in his honour, could not suffice to make up enough of 
chano-e : therefore, after two gallons left behind him in libations as afore- 
said, and two more bottled up for a drink-offering at home, Roger was 
contented to be owed seven and fourpence ; a debt never likely to be liqui- 
dated. Much speculation this afforded to the gossips ; and when the treat- 
er's back was turned, they touched their foreheads, for the man was clearly 
crazed, and they winked to each other with a gesture of significance. 

Grace, while musing on her new half-crown — it was strange how long 
she looked at it — had heard with real amazement that uproarious huzza- 
ing! and, just as her father had levanted for the beer, glided down from 
her closet, and received the wondrous tidings from her step-mother. She 
heard in silence, if not in sadness: intuitive good sense proclaimed to 
her that this sudden gush of wealth was a temptation, even if she felt 



60 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

no secret fears on the score of— shall we call it superstition? — that 
dream, this crock, that dark angel — and this so changed spirit of her 
once religious father: what could she think? she meekly looked to 
Heaven to avert all ill. 

Mary Acton also was less elated and more alarmed than she cared to 
confess : not that she, any more than Grace, knew or thought about lords 
of manors, or physical troubles on the score of finding the crock : but 
Mrs. Quarles's shawl, and sundry fearful fancies tinged with blood, these 
worried her exceedingly, and made her look upon the gold with an 
uneasy feeling, as if it were an unclean thing, a sort of Achan's wedge. 

At last, here comes Roger back, somewhat unsteadily I fear, with a 
stone two-gallon jar of what he was pleased to avouch to be "the down- 
right stingo." "Hooray, Poll !" (he had not ceased shouting all the way 
from Bacchus's,) "Hooray— here 1 be again, a gentle-folk, a lord, a king, 
Poll: why daughter Grace, what's come to you? I won't have no dull 
looks about to-day, girl. Isn't this enough to make a poor man merry ? 
No more troubles, no more toil, no more ' humble sarvent,' no more a 
ragged, plodding ploughman : but a lord, daughter Grace — a great, rich, 
luxurious lord — isn't this enough to make a man sing out hooray? — 
Thank the crock of gold for this — Oh, blessed crock!" 

"Hush, father, hush! that gold will be no blessing to you; Heaven 
send it do not bring a curse. It will be a sore temptation, even if the 
rights of it are not in some one else: we know not whom it may belong 
to, but at any rate it cannot well be ours." 

"Not ours, child? whose in life is it then?" 

Mary Acton, made quite meek by a superstitious dread of having 
money of the murdered, stepped in to Grace's help, whom her father's 
fierce manner had appalled, with " Roger, it belonged to Mrs. Quarles, I 'm 
morally sure on it — and must now be Simon Jennings's, her heir." 

^' What?" he almost frantically shrieked, "shall that white hell-hound 
rob me yet again ? No, dame — I'll hang first ! the crock I found, the 
crock I'll keep: the money's mine, whoever did the murder." Then, 
changing his mad tone into one of reckless inebriate gayety — for he was 
more than half-seas over even then from the pot-house toastings and 
excitement — he added, "But come, wenches, down with your mugs, and 
help me to get through the jar : I never felt so dry in all my life. Here's 
blessings on the crock, on him as sent it, him as has it, and on all the joy 
and comfort it's to bring us! Come, drink, drink — we must all drink 
that — but Where's Tom?" 



I 



ANOTHER DISCOVERY. 61 

If Roger had been quite' himself, he never would have asked so super- 
fluous a question : for Tom was always in one and the same company, 
albeit never in one and the same place : he and his Pan-like Mentor were 
continually together, studying wood-craft, water-craft, and all manner of 
other craft connected with the antique trade of picking and stealing. 

«' Where's Tom?" 

Grace, glad to have to answer any reasonable question, mildly 
answered, "Gone away with Ben, father." 

Alas ! that little word, Ben, gave occasion to reveal a depth in Roger's 
fall, which few could have expected to behold so soon. To think that 
the liberal friend, who only last night had frankly shared his all with 
him, whose honest glowing heart would freely shed its blood for him, 
that he in recollection should be greeted with a loathing ! Ben would 
come, and claim some portion of his treasure — he would cry halves — or, 
who knows? might want all — all: and take it by strong arm, or by 
threat to 'peach against him : — curse that Burke ! he hated him. 

Oh, Steady Acton! what has made thee drink and swear? Oh, Hon- 
est Roger! what has planted guile, and suspicion, and malice in thy 
heart? Are these the mere first-fruits of coveting and having? Is this 
the earliest blessing of that luck which many long for — the finding of a 
crock of gold? 

We would not enlarge upon the scene ; a painful one at all times, when 
man forgets his high prerogative, and drowns his reason in the tankard : 
but, in a Roger Acton's case, lately so wise, temperate, and patient, 
peculiarly distressing. Its chief features were these. Grace tasted 
nothing, but mournfully looked on : once only she attempted to expostu- 
late, but was met — not with fierce oaths, nor coarse chidings, nor even 
with idiotic drivelling — oh no ! worse than that she felt : he replied to her 
with the maudlin drunken promise, "If she'd only be a good girl, and let 
him bide, he 'd give her a big Church-bible, bound in solid gold — that 'ud 
make the book o' some real value, Grace." Poor broken-hearted daugh- 
ter — she rushed to her closet in a torrent of tears. 

As for Mary Acton, she was miraculously meek and dumb ; all the 
scold was quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that 
tamed that shrew; she could see a plenty of those crimson spots, 



which might 



" The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green, one red," 



dancing in the sun-beams, dotted on the cottage .walls, sprinkled as 

6 



62 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

unholy water, over that foul crock. Would not the money be a curse 
to them any how, say nothing of the danger? ' If things went on as they 
began, Mary might indeed have cause for fear : actually, she could not 
a-bear to look upon the crock ; she quite dreaded it, as if it had contained 
a "bottled devil." So there she sat ever so long — silent, thoughtful, 
and any thing but comfortable. 

What became of Roger until next day at noon, neither he nor I can 
tell : true, his carcase lay upon the floor, and the two-gallon jar was 
empty. But, for the real man, who could answer to the name of Roger 
Acton, the sensitive and conscious soul — that was some where galloping 
away for fifteen hours in the Paradise of fools: the Paradise? no— the 
Maelstrom ; tossed about giddily and painfully in one whirl of tumultu- 
ous drunkenness. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

HOW THE HOME WAS BLEST THEREBY. 

It will surprise no one' to be told that, however truly such an excess 
may have been the first, it was by no means the last exploit of our 
altered labourer in the same vein of heroism. Bacchus's was quite close, 
and he needs must call for his change; he had to call often; drank all 
quits ; changed another sovereign, and was owed again ; but, trust him, 
he wasn't going to be cheated out o^ that : take care of the pence, and 
the pounds will take care of themselves. But still it was ditto repeated ; 
changing, being owed, grudging, grumbling: at last he found out the 
famous new plan of owing himself; and as Bacchus's did not see fit to 
reject such wealthy customers, Roger soon chalked up a yard-long score, 
and grew so niggardly that they could not get a penny from him. 

It is astonishing how immediately wealth brings in, as its companion, 
meanness: they walk together, and stand together, and kneel together, 
as the hectoring, prodigal Faulconbridge, the Bastard Plantagenet in King 
John, does with his white-livered, puny brothei", Robert. Wherefore, no 
sooner was Roger blest with gold, than he resolved not to be such a fool 
as to lose liberally, or to give away one farthing. To give, I say, for 
extravagant indulgence is another thing ; and it was a fine, proud pleasure 



HOW THE HOME WAS BLEST. (J3 

to feast a lot of fellows at his sole expense. If meanness is brother to 
wealth, it is at any rate first cousin to extravagance. 

When the dowager collects "her dear five hundred friends" to parade 
before the fresh young heirs her wax-light lovely daughters — when all 
is glory, gallopade, and Gunter — when Rubini warbles smallest, and 
Lablanche is heard as thunder on the stairs — speak, tradesmen, ye who 
best can tell, the closeness that has catered for that feast; tell it out, ye 
famished milliners, ground down to sixpence on a ball-dress bill ; whis- 
per it, ye footmen, with your wages ever due ; let Gath, let Askelon 
re-echo with the truth, that extortion is the parent- of extravagance! 

Now, that episode should have been in a foot note ; but no one takes 
the trouble to read notes; and with justice too; for if a man has any 
thing to say, let him put it in Ifis text, as orderly as may be. And, if 
order be sometimes out of the question, as seems but clearly suitable 
at present to our hero's manner of life, it is wise to go boldly on, with- 
out so prim an usher ; to introduce our thoughts as they reveal them- 
selves, ignorant of "their own degrees," not "standing on the order of 
their coming," but, as a pit crowd on a benefit-night, bustling over one 
another, helter-skelter, "in most admired disorder." This will well com- 
port with Roger's daily life : for, notwithstanding the frequent inter- 
ference of an Amazon wife — regardless of poor, dear Grace's gentle 
voice and melancholy eyes — in spite of a conscience pricking in his 
breast, with the spines of a horse-chestnut, that evil crock appeared from 
the beginning to have been found for but one sole purpose — videlicet, that 
of keeping alight in Roger's brain the fire of mad intoxication. Yes, 
there were sundry other purposes, too, which may as well be told directly. 

The utter dislocation of all home comforts occupied the foremost rank. 
True — in comparison with the homes of affluence and halls of luxury — 
those comforts may have formerly seemed few and far between ; yet still 
the angel of domestic peace not seldom found a rest within the cottage. 
Not seldom? always: if sweet-eyed Grace be such an angel, that ever- 
abiding guest, full of love, duty, piety, and cheerfulness. But now, after 
long-enduring anguish, vexed in her righteous soul by the shocking sights 
and sounds of the drunkard and his parasites (for all the idle vagabonds 
about soon flocked around rich Acton, and were freely welcome to his 
reckless prodigality), Grace had been forced to steal away, and seek 
refuge with a neighbour. Here was one blessing the less. 

Another wretched change was in the wife. Granted, Mary Acton had 
not ever been the pink of politeness, the violet of meekness, nor the rose 



(J4 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

« 

of entire amiability : but if she were a scold, that scolding was well 
meant; and her irate energies were incessantly directed towards clean- 
liness, economy, quiet, and other notabilia of a busy house-wife. She did 
her best to keep the hovel tidy, to make the bravest show with their scanty 
chattels, to administer discreetly the stores of their frugal larder, and to 
recompense the good-man returning from his hard day's work, with much 
of rude joy and bustling kindness. But now, after the first stupor of 
amazement into which the crock and its consequences threw her, Poll 
Acton grew to be a fury : she raged and stormed, and well she might, 
at filth and discomfort in her home, at nauseous dregs and noisome fumes, 
at the orgie still kept up, day by day. and night by night, through the 
length of that first foul week, which succeeded the fortunate discovery. 
And not in vain she raged and stormed — and fought too ; for she did 
fight — ay, and conquered : and miserable Roger, now in full possession 
of those joys which he had longed for at the casement of Hurstley Hall, 
was glad to betake himself to the bench at Bacchus's, whither he with- 
drew his ragged regiment. Thus, that crock had spoilt all there was to 
spoil in the temper and conduct of the wife. 

Look also at the pretty prattling babes, twin boys of two years old, 
whom Roger used to hasten home to see; who had to say their simple 
prayers ; to be kissed, and comforted, and put to bed ; to be made happier 
by a wild flower picked up on his path, than if the gift had been a coral 
with gold bells : where were they now ? neglected, dirty, fretting in a 
corner, their red eyes full of wonder at father's altered ways, and their 
quick minds watching, with astonished looks, the progress of domestic 
discord. How the crock of gold has nipped those early blossoms as a 
killincr frost! 

Again, there used to be, till this sad week of wealth and riotous hilar- 
ity, that constantly recurring blessing of the morn and evening prayer 
which Roger read aloud, and Grace's psalm or chapter ; and afterwards 
the frugal meal — too scanty, perhaps, and coarse — but still refreshing, 
thank the Lord, and seasoned well with health and appetite ; and the 
heart-felt sense of satisfaction that all around was earned by honest 
labour; and there was content, and hope of better times, and God's good 
blessing over every thing. 

Now, all these pleasures had departed ; gold, unhallowed gold, gotten 
iiastily in the beginning, broadcast on the rank strong soil of a heart that 
coveted it earnestly, had sprung up as a crop of poisonous tares, and 
choked the patch of wheat; gold, unhallowed gold, light come, light 



CARE. 65 

gone, had scared or killed the flock of unfledged loves that used to nes- 
tle in the cotter's thatch, as surely as if the cash were stones, flung wan- 
tonly by truants at a dove-cot ; and forth from the crock, that egg of wo, 
had been hatched a red-eyed vulture, to tyrannize in this sad home, 
where but lately the pelican had dwelt, had spread her fostering wing, 
and poured out the wealth of her affections. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CAEE, 



But other happy consequences soon became apparent. If Acton in 
his tipsy state was mad, in his intervals of soberness he was thoroughly 
miserable. And this, not merely on the score of sickness, exhaustion, 
prostrated spirits, blue-devils, or other the long catalogue of a drunkard's 
joys ; not merely from a raging wife, and a wretched home ; not merely 
from the stings, however sharp, however barbed, of a conscience ill at 
ease, that would rise up fiercely like a hissing snake, and strike the 
black apostate to the earth : these all, doubtless, had their pleasant 
influences, adding to the lucky finder's bliss: but there was another 
root of misery most unlooked for, and to the poor who dream of gold, 
entirely paradoxical. 

The possession of that crock was the heaviest of cares. Where on 
earth was he to hide it? how to keep it safely, secretly? What if he 
were robbed of it in some sly way ! O, thought of utter wo ! it made 
the fortunate possessor quiver like an aspen. Or what, if some one or 
more of those blustering boon companions were to come by night with 
a bludgeon and a knife, and — and cut his throat, and find the treasure ? 
or, worse still, were to torture him, set him on the fire like a saucepan 
(he had heard of Tui'pin having done so with a rich old woman), and 
make him tell them " where " in his extremity of pains, and give up all, 
and then — and then murder him at last, outright, and afterwards burn 
the hovel over his head, babes and all, that none might live -to tell the 
tale ? These fears set him on the rack, and furnished one incitinsf cause 
to that uninterrupted orgie ; he must be either mad or miserable, this 
lucky finder. 

Also, even in his tipsy state, he could not cast off" care : he might in 
E 6* 



QQ THECROCKOFGOLD. 

his cups reveal the dangerous secret of having found a crock of gold. 
A secret still it was: Grace, his wife, and himself, were the only souls 
who knew it. Dear Grace feared to say a word about the business: 
not in apprehension of the law, for she never thought of that too probable 
intrusion on the finder: but simply because her unsophisticated piety 
believed that God, for some wise end, had allowed the Evil One to tempt 
her father ; she, indeed, did not know the epigram, 

The devil now is wiser than of yore : 

He tempts by making rich — not making poor : 

but she did not conceive that notion in her mind ; she contrasted the 
wealthy patriarch Job, tried by poverty and pain, but just and patient in 
adversity — with the poor labourer Acton, tried by luxury and wealth, 
and proved to be apostate in prosperity : so she held her tongue, and 
hitherto had been silent on a matter of so much local wonder as her 
father's sudden wealth, in the midst of urgent curiosity and extraordi- 
nary rumours. 

Mary was kept quiet as we know, by superstition of a lower grade, 
the dread of having money of the murdered, a thought she never breathed 
to any but her husband ; and to poor uninitiated Grace (who had not heard 
a word of Ben's adventure), her answer about Mrs. Quarles and Mr. 
Jennings in the dawn of the crock's first blessing, had been entirely 
unintelligible : Mary, then, said never a word, but looked on dreadingly 
to see the end. 

As for Roger himself, he was too much in apprehension of a landlord's 
claims, and of a task-master's extortions, to breath a syllable about the 
business. So he hid his crock as best he could — we shall soon hear 
how and where — took out sovereign after sovereign day by day, and 
made his flush of instant wealth a mystery, a miracle, a legacy, good 
luck, any thing, every thing but the truth: and he would turn fiercely 
round to the frequent questioner with a "What's that to you? — Nobody's 
business but mine :" and then would coaxingly add the implied bribe to 
secresy, in his accustomed invitation — "And now, what'll you take?" 
— a magical phrase, v/hich could suffice to quell murmurs for the time, 
and postponed curiosity to appetite. Thus the fact was still unknown, 
and weighed on Roger's mind as a guilty concealment, an oppressive 
secret. What if any found it out? 

For immediate safety — the evening after his memorable first fifteen 
hours of joy — he buried the crock deeply in a hole in his garden, filling 



CARE. Qj 

all up hard with stones and brick-bats ; and when he had smoothed it 
straight and workmanlike, remembered that he surely hadn't kept out 
enough to last him ; so up it had to come again — five more taken out, 
and the crock was restored to its unquiet grave. 

Scarcely had he done this, than it became dark, and he began to fancy 
some one might have seen him hide it; those low mean tramps (never 
before had he refused the wretched wayfarers his sympathy) were 
always sneaking about, and would come and dig it up in the night : so 
he went out in the dark and the rain, got at it with infinite trouble and a 
broken pickaxe, and exultingly brought the crock in-doors ; where he 
buried it a third time, more securely, underneath the grouted floor, close 
beside the fire in the chimney-corner : it was now nearly midnight, and 
he went to bed. 

Hardly had he tumbled in, after pulling on a nightcap of the flagon, 
than the dread idea overtook him that his treasure might be melted! 
Was there ever such a fool as he? Well, well, to think he could fling 
his purse on the fire! What a horrid thought ! Metallurgy was a science 
quite unknown to Roger ; he only considered gold as heavy as lead, and 
therefore probably as fusible : so down he bustled, made another hole, a 
deeper one too this time, in the floor under the dresser, where, exhausted 
with his toil and care, he deposited the crock by four in the morning — 
and so retired once more. 

All in vain — nobody ever knew when Black Burke might be returning 
from his sporting expeditions — and that beast of a lurcher would be sure 
to be creeping in this morning, and would scratch it up, and his brute 
of a master would get it all ! This fancy was the worst possible : and 
Roger rose again, quite sick at heart, pale, worn, and trembling with a 
miser's haggard joys. Where should he hide that crock — the epithet 
"cursed" crock escaped him this time in his vexed impatience. In the 
house and in the garden, it was equally unsafe. 

Ha ! a bright thought indeed : the hollow in the elm-tree, creaking 
overhead, just above the second arm : so the poor, shivering wretch, 
almost unclad, swarmed up that slimy elm, and dropped his treasure in 
the hollow. Confusion ! how deep it was : he never thought of that ; 
here was indeed something too much of safety : and then those boys of 
neighbour Goode's were birds'-nesting continually, specially round the 
lake this spring. What an idiot he was not to have remembered this! 
And up he climbed again, thrust in his arm to the shoulder, and managed 
to repossess himself a fifth time of that blessed crock. 



68 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

Would that the elm had been hollow to its root, and beneath the root 
a chasm bottomless, and that Plutus in that Narbonne jar had served as 
a supper to Pluto in the shades ! Better had it been for thee, my Roger, 

But he had not hid it yet ; so, that night — or rather that cold morning 
about six, the drenched, half- frozen Fortunatus carried it to bed with 
him : and a precious warming-pan it made : for nothing would satisfy 
the finder of its presence but perpetual bodily contact: — accordingly, 
he placed it in his bosom, and it chilled him to the back-bone. 

Yes; that was undoubtedly the safest way; to carry the spoil about 
with him ; so, next noon — how could he get up till noon after such a 
woful night? — next noon he emptied the jar, and tying up its contents in 
a handkerchief, proceeded to wear it as a girdle ; for an hour he clattered 
about the premises, making as much jingle as a wagoner's team of bells; 
laden heavily with gold, like the iPcjSvaro genius in Herodotus : but he 
soon found out this would not do at all; for, independently of all con- 
cealment at an end, so long as his secret store was rattling as he walked, 
louder than military spurs or sabre-tackle, he soberly reflected that he 
might — possibly, possibly, though not probably — get a glass too much 
again, by some mere accident or other; and then to be robbed of his 
golden girdle, this cincture of all joy ! O, terrible thought ! as well 
[this is my fancy, not Rogers's] deprive Venus of her zone, and see 
how the beggared Queen of Beauty could exist without her treasury, 
the Cestus. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

INVESTMENT. 

Next day, the wealthy Roger had higher aspirations. Why should 
not he get interest for his money, like lords and gentlefolk ? His gold 
had been lying idle too long; more fool he: it ought to breed money 
somehow, he knew that ; for, like most poor men whose sole experience of 
investment is connected with the Lombard's golden balls, he took exalted 
views of usury. Was he to be "hiding up his talent in a napkin — ?" 

Ah ! — he remembered and applied the holy parable, but it smote across 
his heart like a flash of frost, a chilling recollection of good things past 



I 



INVESTMENT. gg 

and gone. What had he been doing with his talents — for he once 
possessed the ten? had he not squandered piety, purity, and patience? 
where were now his gratitude to God, his benevolence to man? the 
father's duteous care, the husband's industry and kindness, the labourer's 
faith, the Christian's hope — who had spent all these? — Till money's love 
came in, and money-store to feed it, the poor man had been rich : but 
now, rotten to the core, by lust of gold, the rich is poor indeed. 

However, such considerations did not long afflict him — for we know 
that lookers-on see more than players — and if Roger had encouraged 
half our wise and sober thoughts, he might have been a better man : but 
Roger quelled the thoughts, and silenced them ; and thoughts are tender 
intonations, shy little buzzing sounds, soon scared by coarser noise: 
Roger had no mind to cherish those small fowls; so they flew back 
again to Heaven's gate, homeless and uncomforted as weeping peri's. 

The bank — the county bank — Shark, Breakem, and Company — this 
was the specious Eldorado, the genuine gold-increaser, the hive where 
he would store his wealth (as honey left for the bees in winter), and was 
to have it soon returned fourfold. It was indeed a thought to make the 
rich man glad, that all his shining heap was just like a sample of seed- 
corn, and the pocket-full should next year fill a sack. How grudgingly 
he now began to mourn over past extravagance, five pieces gone within 
the week! how close and careful he resolved to be in future! how he 
would scrape and economize to get and save but one more of those sweet 
little seeds, that yield more gold — more gold ! And if Roger had been 
privileged in youth to have fed upon the wisdom of the Eton Latin gram, 
mar, he could have now quoted with some experimental unction the 
*^Crescit Amor" line, which every body well knows how to finish. 
Truly, it was growing with his growth, and rioting in strength above 
his weakness. 

Swollen with this expanding love, he packed up his money in what 
were, though he knew it not, rouleaux, but to his plebeian eyes looked 
more like golden sausages: and he would take it to the bank, and they 
should bow to him, and Sir him, and give him forthwith more than he 
had brought; and if those summary gains were middling great — say 
twice as much, to be moderate — he thought he might afford himself a 
chaise coming back, and return to Hurstley Common like a nabob. 
Thus, full of wealthy fancies, after one glass n^ore, off set Roger to the 
county town, with his treasure in a bundle. 

Half-way to it, as hospitality has ordained to be the case wherever 



70 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

there be half-ways, occurred a public-house : and really, notwithstanding 
all our monied neophyte's economical resolutions, his throat was so 
"uncommon dry," that he needs must stop there to refresh the muscles 
of his larynx: so, putting down his bundle on the settle, he called for a 
foaming tankard, and thanking the crock, as his evil wont now was, sat 
down to drink and think. Here was prosperity indeed, a flood of aston- 
ishing good fortune: that he, but a little week agone, a dirty ditcher — 
so was he pleased to designate his former self — a ragged wretch, little 
better than a tramp, should be now progressing like a monarch, with a 
mighty bag of gold to enrich his county town. To enrich, and be there- 
by the richer; for Roger's notions of finance were so simple, as to run 
the risk of being called sublimely indistinct: he took it as an axiom that 
"money bred money," but in what way to draw forth its generative 
properties, whether or not by some new-fangled manure, he was entirely 
ignorant; and it clearly was his wisdom to leave all that mystery of 
money-making solely to the banker. All he cared about was this : to 
come back richer than he came — and, lo! how rich he was already. 
Lolling at high noon, on a Wednesday too, in the extremest mode of 
rustic beauism, with a bag of gold by his side, and a pot of porter in his 
hand — here was an accumulation of magnificence — all the prepositions 
pressed into his service. His wildest hopes exceeded, and almost nothing 
left to wish. Blown up with the pride and importance of the moment, 
and some little oblivious from the potent porter — he had paid and sallied 
forth, and marched a mile upon his way, full of golden fancies, a rich 
luxurious lord as he was — when all on a sudden the hallucination crossed 
his dull pellucid mind, that he had left the store behind him ! O, pungent 
terror ! — O, most exquisite torture ! was it clean gone, stolen, lost, lost, 
lost for ever? Rushing back in an agony of fear, that made the ruddy 
hostess think him crazed, with his hair on end, and a face as if it had 
been white-washed, he flew to the tap-room, and — almost fainted for 
ecstasy of joy when he found it, where he had laid it, on the settle ! 

Better had you lost it, Roger ; better had your ecstasy been sorrow : 
there is more trouble yet for you, from that bad crock of gold. But if 
your lesson is not learnt, and you still think otherwise, go on a little 
while exultingly as now I see you, and hug the treasure to your heart — 
the treasure that will bring you yet more misery. 

And now the town is gained, the bank approached. What ! that big 
barred, guarded place, looking like a mighty mouse-trap? he didn't half 
like to venture in. At last he pushed the door ajar, and took a peep; 



I 



INVESTMENT. 7I 

there were muskets over the mantel-piece, ostentatiously ticketed as 
"Loaded! Beware!" there were leather buckets ranged around the 
walls : he did not in any degree like it : was he to expose his treasure in 
this idiot fashion to all the avowed danger of fire and thieves? How- 
ever, since he had come so far, he would get some interest for his money, 
that he would — so he'd just make bold to step to the counter and ask a 
very obsequious bald-headed gentleman, who sired him quite affably, 

"How much, Master, will you be pleased to give me for my gold?" 

The gentleman looked queerish, as if he did not comprehend the 
question, and answered, " Oh ! certainly, sir — certainly — we do not object 
to give you our notes for it," at the same time producing an extremely 
dirty bundle of worn-out bits of paper. 

Roger stroked his chin. 

"But, Master, my meaning is, not how many 0' them brown bits o' 
paper you '11 sell me for my gold here," and he exhibited a greater store 
than Mr. Breakem had seen at once upon his counter for a year, "but 
how much more gold you'll send me back with than what I've brought? 
by way of interest, you know, or some such law: for I don't know 
much about the Funds, Master." 

" Indeed, sir," replied the civil banker, who wished by any means to 
catch the clodpole's spoil — "you are very obliging; we shall be glad to 
allow you two-and-a-half per centum per annum for the deposit you are 
good enough to leave in our keeping." 

" Leave in your keeping. Master ! no, I didn't say that ! by your leave, 
I'll keep it myself!" 

"In that case, sir, I really do not see how I can do business with you." 

True enough; and Roger would never have been such a monetary 
blockhead, had he not been now so generally tipsy ; the fumes of beer 
had mingled with his plan, and all his usual shrewdness had been blunted 
into folly by greediness of lucre on the one side, and potent liquors on 
the other. The moment that the banker's parting speech had reached 
his ear, the absurdity of Roger's scheme was evident even to himself, 
and with a bare " Good day. Master," he hurriedly took his bundle from 
the counter, and scuttled out as quick as he could. 

His feelings, walking homeward, were any thing but pleasant; the 
bubble of his ardent hope was burst : he never could have more than 
the paltry little sum he carried in that bundle : what a miser he would 
be of it : how mean it now seemed in his eyes — a mere sample-bag of 
seed, instead of the wide-waving harvest ! Ah, well ; he would save 



72 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

and scrape — ay, and go back to toil again — do any thing rather than 
spend. 

Got home, the difficulty now recurred, where was he to hide it? The 
store was a greater care than ever, now those rascally bankers knew of 
it. He racked his brain to find a hiding-place, and, at length, really hit 
upQn a good one. He concealed the crock, now replenished with its 
contents, in the thatch just over his bed's head : it was a rescued darling : 
so he tore a deep hole, and nested it quite snugly. 

Perhaps it did not matter much, but the rain leaked in by that hole all 
night, and fortunate Roger woke in the morning drenched with wet, and 
racked by rheumatism. 



I 



CHAPTER XIX. 

CAIUimY. 



More blessings issue from the crock ; Pandora's box is set wide open, 
and all the sweet inhabitants come forth. If apprehensions for its safety 
made the finder full of care, the increased whisperings of the neighbour- 
hood gave him even deeper reason for anxiety. In vain he told lie upon 
lie about a legacy of some old uncle in the clouds ; in vain he stuck to 
the foolish and transparent falsehood, with a dogged pertinacity that 
appealed, not to reason, but to blows ; in vain he made affirmation 
weaker by his oath, and oaths quite unconvincing by his cudgel : no one 
believed him : and the mystery was rendered more inexplicable from his 
evidently nervous state and uneasy terror of discovery. 

He had resolved at the outset, cunningly as he fancied, to change no 
more than one piece of gold in the same place ; though Bacchus's 
undoubtedly proved the rule by furnishing an exception : and the conse- 
quence came to be, that there was not a single shop in the whole county 
town, nor a farm-house in all the neighbourhood round, where Roger 
Acton had not called to change a sovereign. True, the silver had sel- 
dom been forthcoming ; still, he had asked for it ; and where in life could 
he have got the gold ? Many was the rude questioner, whose curiosity had 
been quenched in drink ; many the insufferable pryer, whom club-law 
had been called upon to silence. Meanwhile, Roger steadily kept on, 



CALUMNY. 



73 



accumulating silver where he could : for his covetous mind delighted in 
the mere semblance of an increase to his store, and took some untutored 
numismatic interest in those pretty variations of his idol — money. 

But if Roger's heap increased, so did the whispers and suspicions of 
the country round; they daily grew louder, and more clamorous; and 
soon the charitable nature of chagrined wonder assumed a shape more 
heart-rending to the wretched finder of that golden hoard, than any other 
care, or fear, or sin, that had hitherto torn him. It only was a miracle 
that the neighbours had not thought of it before ; seldom is the world so 
unsuspicious; but then honest Roger's forty years of character were 
something — they could scarcely think the man so base ; and, above all, 
gentle Grace was such a favourite with all, was such a pattern of purity, 
and kindliness, and female conduct, that the tongue would have blistered 
to its roots, that had uttered scorn of her till now. As things were, 
though, could any thing be clearer? Was charity herself to blame in 
putting one and one together 1 Sir John was rich, was young, gay, and 
handsome ; but Grace was poor — but indisputably beautiful, and prob- 
ably had once been innocent : some had seen her going to the Hall at 
strange times and seasons — for in truth, she often did go there ; Jonathan 
and Sarah Stack, of course, were her dearest friends on earth : and so it 
came to pass, that, through the blessing of the crock, honest Roger was 
believed to live on the golden wages of his daughter's shame! Oh, 
coarse and heartless imputation ! Oh, bitter price to pay for secresy and 
wonderful good fortune! In vain the wretched father stormed, and 
swore, and knocked down more than one foul-spoken fellow that had 
breathed against dear Grace. None but credited the lie, and many 
envious wretches actually gloried in the scandal ; I grieve to say that 
women — divers venerable virgins — rejoiced that this pert hussey was at 
last found out ; she was too pretty to be good, too pious to be pure ; now 
at length they were revenged upon her beauty ; now they had their tri- 
umph over one that was righteous over-much. For other people, thev 
would urge the reasonable question, how else came Roger by the cash ? 
and getting no answer, or worse than none — a prevaricating, mystifying 
mere put-off— they had hardly an alternative in common exercise of 
judgment: therefore, "Shame on her," said the neighbours, "and the 
bitterest shame on him:" and the gaffers and grand-dames shook their 
heads virtuously. 

Yet worse : there was another suggestion, by no means contradictory, 
though simultaneous: what had become of Tom? ay — that bold youno- 

7 .. ° 



74 THECROCKOFGOLD 

fellow — Thomas Acton, Ben Burke's friend : why was he away so long, 
hiding out of the country? they wondered. 

The suspected Damon and Pythias had gone a county off to certain 
fens, and were, during this important week, engaged in a long process 
of ensnaring ducks. 

Old Gaffer White had muttered something to Gossip Heartley, which 
Dick the Tanner overheard, wherein Tom Acton and a gun, and Burke, 
and burglary, and throats cut, and bags of gold, were conspicuous ingre- 
dients : so that Roger Acton's own dear Tom, that eagle-eyed and hand- 
some better image of himself, stood accused, before his quailing father's 
face, of robbery and murder. 

Both — both darlings, dead Annie's little orphaned pets, thus stricken 
by one stone to infamy ! Grace, scouted as a hussey, an outcast, a bad 
girl, a wanton — blessed angel ! Thomas — generous boy — keenly looked 
for, in his near return, to be seized by rude hands, manacled, and dragged 
away, and tried on suspicion as a felon — for what? that crock of gold. 
Yet Roger heard it all, knew it all, writhed at it all, as if scorpions were 
lashing him ; but still he held on grimly, keeping that bad secret. Should 
he blab it out, and so be poor again, and lose the crock? 

That our labourer's changed estate influenced his bodily health, under 
this accumulated misery and desperate excitement, began to be made 
manifest to all. The sturdy husbandman was transformed into a tremu- 
lous drunkard; the contented cottager, into a querulous hypochondriac: 
the calm, religious, patient Christian, into a. tumultuous blasphemer. 
Could all this be, and even Roger's iron frame stand up against the bat- 
tle ! No, the strength of Samson has been shorn. The crock has 
poured a blessing on its finder's very skin, as when the devil covered 
Job with boils. 



CHAPTER XX, 

THE BMLIFF'S VISIT. 



One day at noon, ere the first week well was over since the fortunate 
discovery of gold, as Roger lay upon his bed, recovering from an over- 
night's excess, tossed with fever, vexation, and anxiety, he was at once 



THE BAILIFF'S VISIT. 75 

surprised and frightened by a visit from no less a personage than Mr. 
Simon Jennings. And this was the occasion of his presence : 

Directly the gathering storm of rumours had collected to that focus 
of all calumny, the destruction of female character and murder charged 
upon the innocent, Grace Acton had resolved upon her course ; secresy 
could be kept no longer ; her duty now appeared to be, to publish the 
story of her father's lucky find. 

Grace, we may observe, had never been bound to silence, but only 
imposed it on herself from motives of tenderness to one, whom she 
believed to be taken in the toils of a temptation. She, simple soul, knew 
nothing of manorial rights, nor wotted she that any could despoil her 
father of his money ; but even if such thoughts had ever crossed her 
mind, she loathed the gold that had brought so much trouble on them 
all, and cared not how soon it was got rid of. Her father's health, hon- 
our, happiness, were obviously at stake ; perhaps, also, her brother's very 
life : and, as for herself, the martyr of calumny looked piously to 
heaven, offered up her outraged heart, and resolved to stem this torrent 
of misfortune. Accordingly, with a noble indignation worthy of her, 
she had gone straightway to the Hall, to see the baronet, to tell the truth, 
fling aside a charge which she could scarcely comprehend, and openly 
vindicate her offended honour. She failed — many imagine happily for 
her own peace, if Sir John had not been better than his friends — in gain- 
ing access to the Lord of Hurstley; but she did see Mr. Jennings, who 
serenely interposed, and listened to all she came to say — " her father had 
been unfortunate enough to find a crock of money on the lake side near 
his garden." 

When Jennings heard the tale, he started as if stung by a wasp : and 
urging Grace to tell it no one else (though the poor girl "must," she 
said, "for honour's sake"), he took up his hat, and ran off breathlessly 
to Aeton's cottage. Roger was at home, in bed, and sick ; there was 
no escape ; and Simon chuckled at the lucky chance. So he crept in, 
carefully shut the door, put his finger on his lips to hush Roger's note 
of admiration at so little wished a vision ; and then, with one of his 
accustomed scared and fearful looks behind him, muttered under 
his breath, 

"Man, that gold is mine: I have paid its price to the uttermost; give 
me the honey-pot." 

Roger's first answer was a vulgar oath ; but his tipsy courage faded 
soon away before old habits of subserviency, and he faltered out, 



76 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

"I — I — Muster Jennings! I've got no pot of gold!" 

" Man, you lie ! you have got the money ! give it me at once — and — " 
he added in a low, hoarse voice, "we will not say a word about the murder." 

"Murder!" echoed the astonished man. 

"Ay, murder, Acton: — off! off, I say!" he muttered parenthetically, 
then wrestled for a minute violently, as with something in the air; and 
recovering as from a spasm, calmly added, 

"Ay, murder for the money." 

"I — I!" gasped Roger; "I did no murder, Muster Jennings!" 

A new light seemed to break upon the bailiff, and he answered with a 
tone of fixed determination, 

" Acton, you are the murderer of Bridget Quarles." 

Roger's jaw dropped, dismay was painted on his features, and cer- 
tainly he did look guilty enough. But Simon proceeded in a ten- 
derer tone ; 

"Notwithstanding, give me the gold, Acton, and none shall know a 
word about the murder. We will keep all quiet, Roger Acton, all nice 
and quiet, you know ;" and he added, coaxingly, "come, Roger, give me 
up this crock of gold." 

"Never!" with a fierce anathema, answered our hero, now himself 
again : the horrid accusation had entranced him for a while, but this 
coaxing strain roused up all the man in him: "Never!" and another 
oath confirmed it. 

"Acton, give it up, I say!" was shouted in rejoinder, and Jennings 
glared over him with his round and staring eyes as he lay faint upon 
his bed — " Give up the crock, or else — " 

" Else what ? you whitened villain." 

The bailiff flung himself at Roger's neck, and almost shrieked, "I'll 
serve you as I — " 

There was a tremendous struggle; attacked at unawares, for the 
moment he was nearly mastered ; but Acton's tall and wiry frame soon 
overpowered the excited Jennings, and long before you have read what 
I have written — he has leaped out of bed — seized — doubled up — and 
flung the battered bailiff headlong down the narrow stair-case to the bot- 
tom. This done, Roger, looking like Don Quixote de la Mancha in his 
penitential shirt, mounted into bed again, and quietly lay down ; wonder, 
ing, half-sober, at the strange and sudden squall. 



THE CAPTURE. 77 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE CAPTURE. 

He had not long to wonder. Jennings got up instantly, despite of 
bruises, posted to the Hall, took a search-warrant from Sir John's study, 
(they were always ready signed, and Jennings filled one up,) and 
returned with a brace of constables to search the cottage. 

Then Roger, as he lay musing, fancied he heard men's voices below, 
and his wife, who had just come in, talking to them ; what could they want ? 
tramps, perhaps: or Ben? he shuddered at the possibility; with Tom 
too; and he felt ashamed to meet his son. So he turned his face to the 
wall, and lay musing on — he hadn't been drinking too much over-night — 
Oh, no ! it was sickness, and rheumatics, and care about the crock ; 
Tom should be told that he was very ill, poor father! Just as he had 
planned this, and resolved to keep his secret from that poaching ruffian 
Burke, some one came creeping up the stairs, slided in at the door, and 
said to him in a deep whisper from the further end of the room, 

"Acton, give me the gold, and the meri shall go away; it is not yet 
too late ; tell me where to find the crock of gold." 

An oath was the reply ; and, at a sign from Jennings, up came the 
other two. 

"We have searched every where, Mr. Simon Jennings, both cot and 
garden ; ground disturbed in two or three places, but nothing under it ; 
in-doors too, the floor is broken by the hearth and by the dresser, but no 
signs of any thing there : now. Master Acton, tell us where it is, man, 
and save us all the trouble." 

Roger's newly-learnt vocabulary of oaths was drawn upon again. 

"Did you look in the ash-pit?" asked Jennings. 

"No, sir." 

"Well, while you two search this chamber, I will examine it myself." 

Mr. Jennings apparently entertained a wholesome fear of Acton's 
powers of wrestling. 

Up came Simon in a hurry back again, with a lot of little empty 
leather bags he had raked out, and — the fragment of a shawl! the 
edges burnt, it was a corner bit, and marked B. Q. 

"What do you call this, sir?" asked the exulting bailiff. 

7* 



78 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

"Curse that Burke!" — thought Roger; but he said nothing. 

And the two men up stairs had searched, and pried, and hunted every 
where in vain; the knotty mattress had been ripped up, the chimney 
scrutinized, the floor examined, the bed-clothes overhauled, and as for 
the thatch, if it hadn't been for Roger Acton's constant glance upwards 
at his treasure in the roof, I am sure they never would have found it. 
But they did at last : there it was, the crock of gold, full proof of rob- 
bery and murder! 

"Aha!" said Simon, in a complacent triumph, "Mrs. Quarles's iden- 
tical honey-pot, full of her clean bright gold, and many pieces still 
encased in those tidy leather bags;" and his round eyes glistened again; 
but all at once, with a hurried look over his left shoulder, he exclaimed, 
involuntarily, in a very different tone, "JIa ! away, I say ! — " Then he 
snatched the crock up eagerly, and nursed it like a child. 

"Come along with us, Master Acton, you're wanted somewhere else; 
up, man, look alive, will you?" 

And Roger dressed himself mechanically. It was no manner of use, 
not in the least worth while resisting, innocent though he was; his 
treasure had been found, and taken from him ; he had nothing more to 
live for ; his gold was gone — his god ; where was the wisdom of fighting 
for any thing else ; let them take him to prison if they would, to the jail, 
to the gallows, to any-whither, now his gold was gone. So he put on his 
clothes without a murmur, and went with them as quiet as a lamb. 

Never was there a clearer case ; the housekeeper's hoard had been 
found in his possession, with a fragment of her shawl ; and Sir Jolin 
Vincent was very well aware of the mystery attending the old woman's 
death ; besides, he was in a great hurry to be off"; for Pointer, and Silli- 
phant, and Lord George Pypp, were to have a hurdle race with him that 
day, for a heavy bet ; so he really had not time to go deep into the matter ; 
and the result of five minutes' talk before the magisterial chairs (Squire 
Ryle having been summoned to assist) was, that, on the accusation of 
Simon Jennings, Roger Acton was fully committed to the county jail, to 
be tried at next assizes, for Bridget Quarles's murder. 

Thank God! poor Roger, it has come to this. What other way than 
this was there to save thee from thy sin — to raise thee from thy fall ? 
Where else, but in a prison, could you get the silent, solitary hours 
leading you again to wholesome thought and deep repentance? Where 
else could you escape the companionship of all those loose and low 
associates, sottish brawlers, ignorant and sensual unbelievers, vagabono 



( 



I 



THE CAPTURE. 79 

radicals, and other lewd fellows of the baser sort, that had drank them- 
selves drunk at your expense, and sworn to you as captain ! The place, 
the time, the means for penitence are here. The crisis of thy destiny 
is come. 

Honest Roger, Steady Acton, did I not see thy guardian angel — after 
all his many tears, aggrieved and broken spirit! — did I not see him lift 
his swollen eyes in gratitude to Heaven, and benevolence to thee, and 
smile a smile of hopeful joy when that damned crock was found? 

Gladly could he thank his Lord, to behold the temptation at an end. 

Did I not see the devil slink away from thee abashed, issuing like an 
adder from thy heart, and then, with a sudden Protean change, driven 
from thy hovel as a thunder-cloud dispersing, when Simon Jennings 
seized the jar, hugged it as his household-god — and, took it home with 
him — and counted out the gold — and locked the bloody treasure in his 
iron-chest ? 

Fitly did the murderer lock up curses with his spoil. 

And when God smote thine idol, dashing Dagon to the ground, and thy 
heart was sore with disappointment, and tender as a peeled fig — when 
hope was dead for earth, and conscience dared not look beyond it — ah ! 
Roger, did I judge amiss when I saw, or thought I saw, those eyes full 
of humble shame, those lips quivering with remorseful sorrow? 

We will leave thee in the cold stone cell — with thy well-named angel 
Grace to comfort thee, and pray with thee, and help thee back to God 
again, and so repay the debt that a daughter owes her father. 

Happy prison! where the air is sweetened by the frankincense of 
piety, and the pavement gemmed with the flowers of hope, and the ceil- 
ing arched with Heaven's bow of mercy, and the walls hung around with 
the dewy drapery of penitence ! 

Happy prison ! where the talents that were lost are being found again, 
gathered in humility from this stone floor; where poor-making riches 
are banished from the postern, and rich-making poverty streameth in 
as light from the grated window ; where care vexeth not now the 
labourer emptied of his gold, and calumny's black tooth no longer 
gnaws the heart-strings of the innocent. 

Hark ! it is the turnkey, coming round to leave the pittance for the 
day: he is bringing in something in an earthern jar. Speak, Roger 
Acton, which will you choose, man — a prisoner's mess of pottage — or 
a crock of gold ? 



80 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE AUNT AND HER NEPHEW. 

While we leave Roger Acton in the jail, waiting for the very near 
assizes, and wearing every hour away in penitence and prayer, it will 
be needful to our story that we take a retrospective glance at certain 
events, of no slight importance. 

I must now speak of things, of which there is no human witness; 
recording words, and deeds, whereof Heaven alone is cognizant, Heaven 
alone — and Hell ! For there are secret m£ftt*s, which the murdered 
cannot tell us, and the murderer dare not — let him confess as fully as he 
will. Therefore, with some omnipresent seitse, some invisible ubiquity, 
I must note down scenes as they occurred, whether mortal eye has 
witnessed them or not; I must lay bare secret thoughts, unlatch the 
hidden chambers of the heart, and duly set out, as they successively 
arose, the idea which tongue had not embodied, the feeling which no 
action had expressed. 

Hitherto, we have pretty well preserved inviolate the three grand 
unities — time, place, circumstance ; and even now we do not sin against 
the first and chiefest, however we may seem so to sin ; for, had it suited my 
purpose to have begun with the beginning, and to have placed the pres- 
ent revelations foremost, the strictest stickler for the unities would have 
only had to praise my orthodox adherence to them. As it is, I have 
chosen, for interest sake, to shuffle my cards a little ; and two knaves 
happen to have turned up together just at this time and place. The time 
is just three weeks ago — a week before the baronet came of age, and 
a fortnight antecedent to the finding of the crock ; which, as we knovy, 
after blessing Roger for a se'nnight, has at last left him in jail. The 
place is the cozy house-keepers room at Hurstley : and the brace of 
thorough knaves, to enact then and there as dramatis personcB, includes 
Mistress Bridget Quarles, a fat, sturdy, bluffy, old woman, of a jolly laugh 
withal, and a noisy tongue — and our esteemed acquaintance Mister Simon 
Jennings. The aunt, house-keeper, had invited the nephew, butler, to 
take a dish of tea with her, and rum-punch had now succeeded the 
souchong. 

"Well, Aunt Quarles, is it your meaning to undertake a new master?" 



THE AUNT AND HER NEPHEW. gl 

'' Don't know, nephy — can't say yet what he '11 be like : if he '11 leave 
us as we are, won't say wont." 

" Ay, as we are, indeed ; comfortable quarters, and some little to put 
by, too : a pretty penny you will have laid up all this while, I '11 be 
bound : I wager you now it is a good five hundred, aunt — come, done 
for a shilling." 

"Get along, foolish boy; a'n't you o' the tribe o' wisdom too — ha, 
ha, ha!" 

"I will not say," smirked Simon, '^that my nest has not a feather." 

" It 's easy work for us, Nep ; we hunt in couples : you the men, and 
I the maids — ha, ha!" 

" Tush, Aunt Bridget ! that speech is not quite gallant, I fear." And 
the worshipful extortioners giggled jovially. 

" But it's true enough for all that, Simon : how d'ye manage it, eh, 
boy? much like me, I s'pose ; wages every quarter from the maids, dues 
from tradesmen Christmas-tide and Easter, regular as Parson Evans's ; 
pretty little bits tacked on weekly to the bills, beside presents from 
every body ; and so, boy, my poor forty pounds a-year soon mounts up 
to a hundred." 

" Ay, ay, Aunt Bridget — but I get the start of you, though you prob- 
ably were born a week before-hand : talk of parsons, look at me, a reg- 
ular grand pluralist monopolist, as any bishop can be ; butler in doors, 
bailiff out of doors, land-steward, house-steward, cellar-man, and pay- 
master. I am not all this for naught. Aunt Quarles : if so much goes 
through my fingers, it is but fair that something stick." 

" True, Simon — O certainly ; but if you come to boasting, my boy, 1 
don't carry this big bunch o' keys for nothing neither. Lord love you ! 
why merely for cribbings in the linen-line for one month, John Draper 
swapped me that there shawl : none o' my clothes ever cost me a penny, 
and I a'n't _quite as bare as a new-born baby neither. Look at them 
trunks, bless you!" 

"Ay, ay, aunt, I'll be bound the printer of your prayer-book has left 
out a 'not,' before the 'steal,' eh? — ha! ha!" 

"Fie, naughty Simon, fie! them's not stealings, them's parquisites. 
Where 's the good o' living in a great house else? But come. Si, haven't 
you struck out the 'not,' for yourself, though the printer did his duty, 
eh, Nep?" 

" Not a bit, aunt — not a bit : all sheer honesty and industry. Look at 
my pretty little truck-shop down the village. Wo betide the labourer 
F 



g2 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

that leaves off dealing there! not one that works at Hurstley, but eats 
my bread and bacon; besides the 'tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff.'" 

"Pretty fairish articles, eh? I never dealt with you. Si: no, Nep, 
no — you never saw the colour o' my money," 

Jennings gave a start, as if a thought had pricked him ; but gayly 
recovering himself, said, 

" Oh, as to pretty fairish, I know there is one thing about the bacon 
good enough ; ay, and the bread too — the very best of prices ; ha ! ha ! 
is not that good ? And for the other genuine articles, I don't know that 
much of the tea comes from China — and the coffee is sold ground, 
because it is burnt maize — and there 's a plenty of wholesome cabbage 
leaf cut up in the tobacco — while as for snuff, 1 give them a dry, pep- 
pery, choky, sneezy dust, and I dare say that it does its duty." 

It was astonishing how innocently the worthy couple laughed together. 

"My only trouble. Aunt Quarles, is where to keep my gains — what 
to do with them. I am quite driven to the strong-box system, interest is 
so bad ; and as to speculations, they are nervous things, and sicken one. 
I invest in the Great Western one day — a tunnel falls in, so I sell my 
shares the next, and send the proceeds to Australia; then, looking at 
the map, I see the island isn't clean chalked out all round, and begin- 
ning to fear that the sea will get in where it a'n't made water-tight by 
the Admiralty, I call the money home again. You see I don't know 
what to do with gold when I get it. Where do you keep yours now, 
aunt, I wonder?" 

" O, Nep, never mind me ; you rattle on so I can't get in never a word. 
I '11 only tell you where I don't keep it. Not at Breakem's bank, for 
they 're brewers, and hosiers, and chandlers, and horse-dealers — ay, and 
swindlers too, the whole ' company ' on 'em ; not in mortgages, for I hate 
the very smell of a lawyer, with all his pounce and parchment; not in 
Gover'me't 'unities, for I 'm an old 'ooman, boy ; and not in the Three 
per Cents, nor any other per cents, for I 've sense enough to know that 
my highest interest lies in counting out, as my first principle is dropping 
in." And the fat female laughed herself purple at the venerable joke. 

Simon was a courtier, and laughed too, as immoderately as possible. 

" Ah ! I dare say now you have got a Chubb's patent somewhere full 
of gold ?" he asked somewhat anxiously ; " take your punch, aunt, wont 
you? I do not see you drink." 

"Simon, mark me; fools who want to be robbed put their money into 
an iron chest, that thieves may know exactly where to find it; they 



SCHEMES. 83 

might as well ticket it ' cash,' and advertise to Newgate — come and steal. 
I know a little better than to be such a fool." 

" Yes^ certainly — I dare say now you keep it in your work-box, or 
sew it up in your stays, or hide it in the mattress, or in an old tea-pot, 
rnaybe." And Jennings eyed her narrowly. 

"Nephew, what rhymes to money?" 

"Money? — Well I can't say I am a poet — stony, perhaps. At least," 
added the benevolent individual, " when I have raised a wretch's rent to 
gain a little more by him, stony is not a bad shield to lift against pray- 
ers, and tears, and orphans, and widows, and starvation, and all such 
nonsense." 

"Not bad, neither, Nap: but there's a better rhyme than that." 

"You cannot mean honey, aunt? when I guessed stony, I thought you 
might have some snug little cash cellar under the flags. But honey? 
are you such a thorough Mrs. Rundle as to pickle and preserve your 
very guineas, the same as you do strawberries or apricots in syrup?" 

" Oh, you clever little fool ! how prettily you do talk on : your tongue 's 
as tidy as your cash-book : when you 've any money to put by, come to 
Aunt Bridget for a crock to hide it in : mayn't one use a honey-pot, as 
Teddy Rourke would say, barring the honey ?" 

"Ha! and so you hide the hoard up there, aunt, eh? along with the 
preserves in a honey-pot, do you?" 

" We '11 see — we '11 see, some o' these long days ; not that the mon- 
ey 's to be yours, Nep — you 're rich enough, and don't want it ; there 's 
your poor sister Scott with her fourteen children, and Aunt Bridget must 
give her a lift in life : she was a good niece to me, Simon, and never left 
my side before she married : maybe she '11 have cause to bless the dead." 

Jennings hardly spoke a word more ; but drained his glass in silence, 
got up a sudden stomach-ache, and wished his aunt good-night. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

SCHEMES. 

We must follow Simon Jennings to his room. He felt keenly disap- 
pointed. Money was the idol of his heart, as it is of many million others. 
He had robbed, lied, extorted, tyrannized ; he had earned scorn, ill-report, 



84 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

and hatred ; nay, he had even diligently gone to work, and lost his own 
self-love and self-respect in the service of his darling idol. He was at 
once, for lucre's sake, the mean, cringing fawner, and the pitiless, iron 
despot ; to the rich he could play supple parasite, while the poor man 
only knew him as an unrelenting persecutor ; with the good, and they 
were chiefly of the fairer, softer sex, he walked in meekness, the spirit- 
ual hypocrite ; the while, it was his boast to over-reach the worst in low 
duplicity and crooked dealing. All this he was for gold. When the 
eye of the world was on him, and intuition warned him of the times, he 
was ever the serene, the coi'rect, with a smooth tongue and an oily smile ; 
but in the privacy of some poor hovel, where his debtor sued for indul- 
gence, or some victim of his passions (he had more depravities than one) 
threw her wretched self upon his pity, then could Simon Jennings lash 
sternness into rage, and heat his brazen heart with the embers of invet- 
erate malice. It was as if the serpent, that voluble, insinuating reptile, 
which had power to fascinate poor Eve, turned to rend her when she had 
fallen, erect, with flashing eyes, and bristling crest, with venomed fangs, 
and hissing. Behold, snake-worshippers of Mexico, the prototype of 
your grim idol, in Mammon's model slave and specimen disciple ! 

Such a man was Simon Jennings, a soul given up to gold — exclusively 
to gold ; for although, as we have hinted, and as hereafter may appear, 
he could sell himself at times to other sins, still these were but as stars 
in Ills evil firmament, while covetousness ruled it like the sun ; or, if the 
beauteous stars and blessed sun be an image too hallowed for his wick- 
edness, we may find a fitter in some stagnant pool, where the pestilential 
vapour over all is Mammonism, and the dull, fat weeds that rot beneath, 
are pride, craftiness, and lechery. In fact, to speak of passions in a 
heart such as his, were a palpable misnomer ; all was reduced to calcu- 
lation; his rage was fostered to intimidate, and where the wretch seemed 
kinder, his kindnesses were aimed at power, as an object, rather than at 
pleasure — the power to obtain more gold. 

For it is a dreadful truth (which I would not dare to utter if such 
crimes had never been), that a reprobate of the bailiff" Jennings's stamp 
may, by debts, or fines, or kind usurious loans, entrap a beggared crea- 
ture in his toils ; and then lyingly propose remission at the secret sacri- 
fice of honour, in some one, over whom that dastard beggar has control ; 
and having this point gained, the seducer is quite capable of using, for 
still more extortion, the power which a threatening of exposure gives, 
when the criminally weak has stooped to sin, on promises of silence and 



SCHEMES. 85 

delivery from ruin. I wish there may be no poor yeoman in this broad 
land, of honourable name withal, he and his progenitors for ages, who 
can tell the tale of his own base fears, a creditor's exactions, and" some 
dependant victim's degradation : some orphaned niece, some friendless 
ward, immolated in her earliest youth at the shrine of black-hearted 
Mammon ; I wish there may be no sleek middle-man guilty of the crimes 
here charged upon Simon Jennings. 

This worthy, then, had been introduced at Hurstley by his aunt, Mrs. 
Quarles, on the occurrence of a death vacancy in the lad-of-all-work 
department, during the long ungoverned space of young Sir John's 
minority. As the precious " lad " grew older, and divers in-door poten- 
tates died oft', the house-keeper had power to push her nephew on to page- 
ship, footmanship, and divers other similar crafts, even to the final post of 
butler; while his own endeavours, backed by his'aunt's interest, managed 
to secure for him the rule out of doors no less than in, and the closest pos- 
sible access to guardians and landlords, to the tenants — and their rent. 

Now, the amiable Mrs. Quarles had contrived the elevation of her 
nephew, and connived at his monopolies, mainly to fit in cleverly with her 
own worldly weal ; for it would never have done to have risked the loss 
of innumerable perquisites, and other peculations, by the possible advent 
of an honest butler. But, while the worshipful Simon, to do him only 
justice, fully answered Mrs. Bridget's purpose, and even added much to 
her emoluments ; still he was no mere derivative scion, but an independ- 
ent plant, and entertained views of his own. He had his own designs, 
and laid himself out to entrap his aunt's affections; or rather, for I can- 
not say he greatly valued these, to secure her good graces, and worm 
himself within the gilded clauses of her will ; she was an old woman, 
rolling in gold, no doubt had a will ; and as for himself, he was younger 
by five-and-thirty years, so he could affbi'd to wait a little, before trying 
on her shoes. The petty schemes of thievery and cheating, which he 
in his Quotem capacities had practised, were to his eyes but as driblets 
of wealth in comparison with the mighty stream of his old aunt's savings. 
Not that he had done amiss, trust him ! but then he knew the amount of 
his own hoard to a farthing, while of hers he was entirely ignorant ; so, 
on the principle of ' otnne ignolum fro mirijico,' he pondered on its vast- 
ness with indefinite amazement, although probably it might not reach the 
quarter of his own. For it should in common charity be stated, that, 
with all her hiding and hiving propensities, Mrs. Quarles, howevei 
usually a screw, was by fits and starts an extravagant woman, and 

8 



86 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

besides spending on herself, had occasionally helped her own kith and 
kin ; poor niece Scott, in particular, had unconsciously come in for 
many pleasant pilfe rings, and had to thank her good aunt for innu- 
merable filched groceries, and hosieries, and other largesses, which (the 
latter in especial) really had contributed, with sundry other more self 
indulgent expenses, to make no small havoc of the store. 

Still, this store was Simon's one main chance, the chief prize in his 
hope's lottery ; and it was with a pang, indeed, that he found all his 
endeavours to compass its possession had been vain. Was that endless 
cribbage nothing, and the weary Bible-lessons on a Sunday, and the con- 
stant fetchings and carryings, and the forced smiles, sham congratulations, 
and other hypocritical affections — fearing for his dear aunt's dropsy, and 
inquiring so much about her bunions — was all this dull servitude to meet 
with no reward ? With none ? worse than none ! Fool that he was ! had 
he schemed, and plotted, and flattered, and cozened — ay, and given away 
many pretty little presents, lost decoys, that had cost hard money, all for 
nothing — less than nothing — to be laughed at and postponed to his Meth- 
odist sister Scott ? The impudence of deliberately telling him he "didn't 
want it, and was rich enough!" as if "enough" could ever be good 
grammar after such a monosyllable as "rich;" and "want it" indeed! 
of course he wanted it; if not, why had he slaved so many years? want 
it, indeed ! if to hope by day, and to dream by night — if to leave no 
means untried of delicately showing how he longed for it — if to grow 
sick with care, and thin with coveting — if this were to want the gold, 
good sooth, he wanted it. Don't tell him of starving brats, his own very 
bowels pined for it ; don't thrust in his face the necessities of others — 
the necessity is his ; he must have it — he will have it — talk of necessity ! 

Wait a bit : is there no way of managing some better end to all this ? 
no mode of giving the right turn to that wheel of fortune, round which 
his cares and calculations have been hovering so long? Is there no con- 
ceivable method of possessing that vast hoard ? 

Bless me! how huge it must be! and Simon turned whiter at the 
thought : only add up Mother Quarles's income for fifty-five years : she 
is seventy-five at least, and came here a girl of twenty. Simon's hair 
stood on end, and his heart went like a mill-clapper, as he mentally fig. 
ured out the sum. 

Is there no possibility of contriving matters so that I may be the 
architect of my own good luck, and no thanks at all to the old witch 
there? Dear — what a glorious fancy — let me think a little. Cannot I 
get at the huge hoard some how ? 



THE DEVIL'S COUNSEL. 97 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE DEVIL'S COUNSEL. 

"Steal it," said the Devil. 

Simon was all of a twitter ; for though he fancied his own heart said 
it, still his ear-drum rattled, as if somebody had spoken. 

Simon — that ear-drum was to put you off your guard : the deaf can 
hear the devil: he needs no tympanum to commune with the spirit: 
listen again, Simon ; your own thoughts echo every word. 

" Steal it : hide in her room ; you know she has a shower-bath there, 
which nobody has used for years, standing in a corner; two or three 
cloaks in it, nothing else : it locks inside, how lucky ! ensconce yourself 
there, watch the old woman to sleep — what a fat heavy sleeper she is ! — 
quietly take her keys, and steal the store : remember, it is a honey-pot. 
Nothing 's easier — or safer. Who 'd suspect you ?" 

" Splendid ! and as good as done," triumphantly exclaimed the nephew, 
snapping his fingers, and prancing with glee ; — " a glorious fancy ! bless 
my lucky star!" 

If there be a planet Lucifer, that was Simon's lucky star. 

And so, Mrs Quarles the biter is going to be bit, eh? It generally is 
so in this world's government. You, who brought in your estimable 
nephew to aid and abet in your own dishonest ways, are, it seems, going 
to be robbed of all your knavish gains by him. This is taking the wise 
in their own craftiness, I reckon : and richly you deserve to lose all your 
ill-got hoard. At the same time, Mrs. Quarles — I will be just — there 
are worse people in the world than you are : in comparison with your 
nephew, I consider you a grosser kind of angel; and I really hope no 
harm may befall your old bones beyond the loss of your money. How. 
ever, if you are to lose this, it is my wish that poor Mrs. Scott, or some 
other honest body, may get it, and not Simon ; or rather, I should not 
object that he may get it first, and get hung for getting it, too, before the 
sister has the hoard. 

Our friend, Simon Jenniilgs, could not sleep that night ; his reveries 
and scheming lasted from the rum-punch's final drop, at ten P. M., to 
circiter two A. M., and then, or thenabouts, the devil hinted "steal it;" 
and so, not till nearly four, he began to shut his eyes, and dream again, 



88 THECROCKOFGOLD, 

as his usual fashion was, of adding up receipts in five figures, and of 
counting out old Bridget's hoarded gold. 

Next day, notwithstanding nocturnal semi-sleeplessness, he awoke as 
brisk as a bee, got up in as exhilarated a state as any gas-balloon, and 
was thought to be either surprisingly in spirits, or spirits surprisingly in 
him ; none knew which, " where each seemed either." That whole day 
long, he did the awkwardest things, and acted in the most absent manner 
possible ; Jonatlian thought Mr. Simon was beside himself; Sarah Stack, 
foolish thing ! said he was in love, and was observed to look in the glass 
several times herself; other people did not know what to think — it was 
quite a mystery. To recount only a few of his unprecedented exploits 
on that day of anticipative bliss : 

First, he asked the porter how his gout was, and gave him a thimble- 
full of whiskey from his private store. 

Secondly, he paid Widow Soper one whole week's washing in full, 
without the smallest deduction or per centage. 

Thirdly, he ordered of Richard Buckle, commonly called Dick the 
Tanner, a lot of cart harness, without haggling for price, or even asking it. 

And, fourthly, he presented old George White, who was coming round 
with a subscription paper for a dead pig — actually, he presented old Gaffer 
White with the sum of two-pence out of his own pocket ! never was such 
careless prodigality. 

But the little world of Hurstley did not know what we know. They 
possessed no clue to the secret happiness wherewithal Simon Jennings 
hugged himself; they had no inkling of the crock of gold; they thought 
not he was going to be suddenly so rich ; they saw no cause, as we do, 
why he should feel to be like a great heir on the eve of his majority ; 
they wotted not that Sir John Devereux Vincent, Baronet, had scarcely 
more agreeable or triumphant feelings when his clock struck twenty- 
one, than Simon Jennings, butler, as the hour of his hope drew nigh. 

If a destiny like this man's can ever have a crisis, the hour of his 
hope is that; but downward still, into a lower gulf, has been continually 
his bad career; there is (unless a miracle intervene) no stopping in the 
slope on which he glides, albeit there may be precipices. He that 
rushes in his sledge down the artificial ice-hills of St. Petersburgh, 
skims along not more swiftly than Jennings, from the altitude of infant 
innocence, had sheered into the depths of full-grown depravity ; but 
even he can fall, and reach, with startling suddenness, a lower deep. 

As if that Russian mountain, hewn asunder midway, were fitted flush 



THE AMBUSCADE. 89 

to a Norwegian cliff, beetling precipitately over the whirlpool ; then tilt 
the sledge with its furred inmate over the slope, let it skim with quicker 
impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and, leaping 
from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the eddying 
waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind among 
the roots of the everlasting hills, and split upon the loadstone of the centre. 
Even such a fate, " down, down to hell," will come to Simon Jennings ; 
wrapped in the furs of complacency, seated in the sledge of covetousness, 
a-down the slippery launch of well-worn evil habit — over the precipice 
of crime — into the billows of impenitent remorse — ^to be swallowed by 
the vortex of Gehenna! 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE AJiCBUSCADE. 

Night came, and with it all black thoughts. Not that they were black 
at once, any more than darkness leaps upon the back of noon, without 
the intervening cloak of twilight. Oh dear, no! Simon's thoughts 
accommodated themselves fitly to the time of day. They had been, 
for him, at early morning, pretty middling white, that is whity-brown ; 
thence they passed, with the passing hour kindly, through the shades of 
burnt sienna, raw umber, and bistre ; until, just as we may notice in the 
case of marking-ink ; that which, five minutes ago, was as water only 
delicately dirtied, has become a fixed and indelible black. 

Simon was resolved upon the spoil, come what might; although his 
waking sensations of buoyancy, his noon-day cogitations of a calmer 
kind, and his even-tide determined scheming, had now given way to a 
nervous and unpleasant trepidation. So he poured spirits down to keep 
his spirits up. Very early after dark, he had watched his opportunity 
while Mrs. Quarles was scolding in the kitchen, had slipped shoeless 
and unperceived, from his pantry into the housekeeper's room, and 
locked himself securely in the shower bath. Hapless wight! it was 
very little after six yet, and there he must stand till twelve or so : his 
foresight had not calculated this, and the devil had already begun to 
cheat him. But he would go through with it now ; no flinching, though 

8* 



90 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

his rabbit back is breaking with fatigue, and his knocked knees totter 
with exhaustion, and his haggard eyes swim dizzily, and his bad heart 
is failing him for fear. 

Yes, fear, and with good reason too for fear; "nothing easier, nothing 
safer," said his black adviser ; how easily for bodily pains, how safely 
for chances of detection, was he getting at the promised crock of gold ! 

Mr. Jennings! Mr. Simon! where in the world was Mr. Jennings?" 
nobody knew ; he must have gone out somewhere. Strange, too — and 
left his hat and great-coat. 

Here 's a general for an ambuscade ; Oh, Simon, Simon ! you have 
had the whole day to think of it — how is it that both you and your dark 
friend overlooked in your calculations the certainty of search, and the 
chance of a discovery? The veriest school-boy, when he hid himself, 
would hide his hat. I am half afraid that you are in that demented 
state, which befits the wretch ordained to perish. 

But where is Mr. Jennings? that was the continued cry for four ago- 
nizing hours of dread and difficulty. Sarah, the still-room maid, was 
sitting at her work, unluckily in Mrs. Quarles's room ; she had come in 
shortly after Simon's secret entry ; there she sat, and he dared not stir. 
And they looked every where — except in the right place ; to do the devil 
justice, it was a capital hiding-corner that; rooms, closets, passages, cel- 
lars, out-houses, gardens, lofts, tenements, and all the " general words," 
in a voluminous conveyance, were searched and searched in vain ; more 
than one groom expected (hoped is a truer word) to find Mr. Jennings 
hanging by a halter from the stable-lamp; more than one exhilarated 
labourer, hastily summoned for the seai'ch, was sounding the waters with 
a rake and rope, in no slight excitement at the thought of fishing up a 
deceased bailiff. 

It was a terrible time for the ensconced one : sometimes he thought 
of coming out, and treating the affair as a bit of pleasantry : but then 
the devil had taken off his shoes — as a Glascow captain deals with hi:< 
cargo of refractory Irishers; how could he explain that? his abominable 
old aunt was shrewd, and he knew how clearly she would guess at the 
truth ; if he desired to make sure of losing every chance, he could come 
out now, and reveal himself; but if he nourished still the hope of count- 
ing out that crock of gold, he'll bide where he is, and trust to — to — to 
fate. The wretch had " Providence " on his blistered tongue. 

If, under the circumstances, any thing could be added to Simon's grat- 
ification, such pleasing addition was afforded in overhearing, as Lord 



THE AMBUSCADE. 



91 



Brougham did, the effect which his rumoured death produced on the 
minds of those who best had known him. It so happened, Sarah was 
sick, and did not join the universal hunt ; accordingly, being the only- 
audience, divers ambassadors came to tell her constantly the same most 
welcome news, that Jennings had not yet been found. 

"Lawk, Sally," said a helper, "what a blessing it'll be, if that mean 
old thief's dead ; I '11 go to town, if 'tis so, get a dozen Guy's-day rock- 
ets, tie 'em round with crape, and spin 'em over the larches : that '11 bo 
funeral fun won't it? and it'll sarve to tell the neighbours of our luck in 
getting rid on him." 

"I doan't like your thought, Tom," said another staider youth: "it's 
ill-mirth playing leap-frog over tomb-stones, and poor bravery insulting 
the dead. Besides, I'm thinking the bad man that's taken from us an't 
a going up'ards, so it 's no use lending him a light. I wish we may all lie 
in a cooler grave than he does, and not have to go quite so deep down'ard." 

"Gee up for Lady-day!" exclaimed the emancipated coachman; 
" why, Sail, I shall touch my whole lump of wages free for the fust time : 
and I only wish the gals had our luck." 

" Here, Sarah," interposed a kind and ruddy stable youth, " as we 're 
all making free with Mr. Simon's own special ale, I 've thought to bring 
you a nogging on't : come, you 're not so sick as you can't drink with all 
the rest on us — The bailiff, and may none on us never see his face 
no more !" 

These, and similar testimonials to the estimation in which Simon's 
character was held, must have gratified not a little the hearer of his own 
laudations : now and then, he winced so that Sarah might have heard 
him move : but her ear was alive to nothing but the news-bringers, 
and her eyes appeared to be fixed upon the linen she was darning. 
That Jennings vowed vengeance, and wreaked it afterwards too, on the 
youths that so had shown their love, was his solitary pleasure in the 
shower-bath. But his critics were too numerous for him to punish all : 
they numbered every soul in the house, besides the summoned aiders — 
only excepting three : Sarah, who really had a head-ache, and made but 
little answers to the numerous glad envoys ; Jonathan Floyd, whose 
charity did not altogether hate the man, and who really felt alarmed at 
his absence ; and chiefest, Mrs. Quarles, who evinced more affection for 
her nephew than any thought him worthy of exciting — she wrung her 
hands, wept, offered rewards, bustled about every where, and kept call- 
ing blubberingly for " Simon — poor dear Simon." 



92 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

At length, that fearful hue and cry began to subside — the hubbub 
came to be quieter : neighbour-folks went home, ana inmates went to bed. 
Sarah Stack put aside her work, and left the room. 

What a relief to that hidden caitiff! his feet, standing on the cold, 
damp iron so many hours, bare of brogues, were mere ice — only that 
they ached intolerably : he had not dared to move, to breathe, and was 
all over in one cramp : he did not bring the brandy-bottle with him, as 
he once had planned ; for calculation whispered — " Don't, your head will 
be the clearer ; you must not muddle your brains ;" and so his caution 
over-reached itself, as usual ; his head was in a fog, and his brains in a 
whirlwind, for lack of other stimulants than fear and pain. 

O Simon, how your prudence cheats you ! five mortal hours of 
anguish and anxiety in one unalterable posture, without a single drop 
of creature-comfort ; and all this preconcerted too ! 



CHAPTER XXVI.. 

PRELIMNAEIES. 

At last, just as the nephew was positively fainting from exhaustion, in 
came his kind old aunt to bed. She talked a good deal to herself, did 
Mrs. Quarles, and Simon heard her say, 

" Poor fellow — poor, dear Simon, he was taken bad last night, and has 
seemed queerish in the head all day : pray God nothing 's amiss with 
the boy!" 

The boy's heart (he was forty) smote him as he heard : yes, even he 
was vexed that Aunt Bridget could be so foolishly fond of him. But 
he would go on now, and not have all his toil for nothing. "I'm in for 
it," said he, "and there's an end." 

Ay, Simon, you are, indeed, in for it; the devil has locked you in — 
but as to the end, we shall see, we shall see. 

"I shouldn't wonder now," the good old soul went on to say, "if 
Simon 's wentured out without his hat to cool a head-ache : his grand- 
father — peace be with him ! died, poor man, in a Lunacy 'Sylum : alack, 
Si, I wish you mayn't be going the same road. No, no, I hope not — he 's 
always so prudent-like, and wise, and good ; so kind, too, to a poor old 
fool like me :" and the poor old fool began to cry again. 



PRELIMINARIES. 



93 



"Silly boy — but he'll take cold at any rate: Sarah!" (here Mrs. 
Quarles rung her bell, and the still-maid answered it.) "Sarah Stack, 
sit up awhile for Mr. Jennings, and when he comes in, send him here to 
me. Poor boy," she went on soliloquizing, " he shall have a drop or two 
to comfort his stomach, and keep the chill out." 

The poor boy, lying perdu, shuddered at the word chill, and really 
wished his aunt would hold her tongue. But she didn't. 

" Maybe now," the affectionate old creature proceeded, " maybe Simon 
was vexed at what I let drop last night about the money. I know he 
loves his sister Scott, as I do : but it '11 seem hard, too, to leave him noth- 
ing. I must make my will some day, I 'spose ; but don't half like the 
job: it's always so nigh death. Yes — yes, dear Si shall have a snug 
little corner." 

The real Simon Pure, in his own snug little corner, writhed again. 
Mrs. Quarles started at the noise, looked up the chimney, under the bed, 
tried the doors and windows, and actually went so near the mark as to 
turn the handle of the shower-bath; "Drat it," said she, "Sarah must 
ha' took away the key : well, there can't be nothing there but cloaks, 
that's one comfort." 

Last of all, a thought struck her — it must have been a mouse at the 
preserves. And Mrs. Quarles forthwith opened the important cupboard, 
where Jennings now well knew the idol of his heart was shrined. Then 
another thought struck Mrs. Quarles, though probably no unusual one, 
and she seemed to have mounted on a chair, and to be bringing down 
some elevated piece of crockery. Simon could see nothing with his 
eyes, but his ears made up for them : if ever Dr. Elliotson produced 
clairvoyance in the sisters Okey, the same sharpened apprehensions 
ministered to the inner man of Simon Jennings through the instrumental 
magnet of his inordinately covetous desires. Therefore, though his 
retina bore no picture of the scene, the feelers of his mind went forth, 
informing him of every thing that happened. 

Down came a Narbonne honey-pot — Simon saw that first, and it was 
as the lamp of Aladdin in his eyes : then the bladder was whipped off, 
and the crock set open on the table. Jennings, mad as Darius's horse at 
the sight of the object he so longed for, once thought of rushing from his 
hiding-place, taking the hoard by a coup de main, and running off straight- 
way to America : but — deary me — that '11 never do ; I mustn't leave my 
own strong-box behind me, say nothing of hat and shoes : and if I stop 
for any thing, she 'd raise the house. 



94 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

While this was passing through the immaculate mind of Simon Jen- 
nings, Bridget had been cutting up an old glove, and had made one of 
its fingers into a very tidy little leather sacklet ; into this she deposited 
a bright half sovereign, spoil of the day, being the douceur of a needy 
brush-maker, who wished to keep custom, and, of course, charged all 
these vails on the current bill for mops and stable-sponges. 

"Ha!" muttered she, "it's your last bill here, Mr. Scrubb, I can tell 
you ; so, you were going to put me off with a crown-piece, were you ? 
and actually that bit of gold might as well have been a drop of blood 
wrung from you : yes — yes, Mr. Scrubb, I could see that plainly ; and 
so you 've done for yourself." 

Then, having sewed up the clever little bag, she dropped it into the 
crock : there was no jingle, all dumby : prudent that, in his aunt — for 
the dear morsels of gold were worth such tender keeping, and leather 
would hinder them from wear and tear, set aside the clink being silenced. 
So, the nephew secretly thanked Bridget for the wrinkle, and thought 
how pleasant it would be to stuff old gloves with his own yellow store. 
Ah, yes, he would do that — to-morrow morning. 

Meanwhile, the pig-skin is put on again, and the honey-pot stored 
away: and Simon instinctively stood a tip-toe to peep ideally into tl^at 
wealthy corner cupboard. His mind's eye seemed to see more honey- 
pots ! Mammon help us ! can they all be full of gold ? why, any one 
of them would hold a thousand pounds. And Simon scratched the palms 
of his hands, and licked his lips at the thought of so much honey. 

But see, Mrs. Quarles has, in her peculiar fashion, undressed herself: 
that is to say, she has taken off her outer gown, her cap and wig — and 
then has added to the volume of her under garments, divers night habil- 
iments, flannelled and frilled : while wrappers, manifold as a turbancd 
Turk's, protect ear-ache, tooth-ache, head-ache, and face-ache, from the 
elves of the night. 

And now, that the bedstead creaks beneath her weight, (as well it 
may, for Bridget is a burden like Behemoth,) Simon's heart goes thump 
so loud, that it was a wonder the poor woman never heard it. That heart 
in its hard pulsations sounded to me like the carpenter hammering on her 
coffin-lid : I marvel that she did not take it for a death-watch tapping to 
warn her of her end. But no : Simon held his hand against his heart 
to keep it quiet : he was so very fearful the pitapating would betray him. 
Never mind, Simon ; don't be afraid ; she is fast asleep already ; and 
her snore is to thee as it were the challenge of a trumpeter calling to 
the conflict. 



ROBBERY. 95 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

ROBBERY. 

Hush — hush — hush ! 

Stealthily on tiptoe, with finger on his lips, that fore-doomed man 
crept out. 

" The key is in the cupboard still — ha ! how lucky : saves time that, 
and trouble, and — and — risk ! Oh, no — there can be no risk now," and 
the wretch added, "thank God!" 

The devil loves such piety as this. 

So Simon quietly turned the key, and set the cupboard open : it was 
to him a Bluebeard's chamber, a cave of the Forty Thieves, a garden 
of the Genius in Aladdin, a mysterious secret treasure-house of wealth 
uncounted and unseen. 

What a galaxy of pickle-pots! tier behind tier of undoubted currant- 
jelly, ranged like the houses in Algiers! vasty jars of goosebei-ry! 
delicate little cupping-glasses full of syruped fruits! Yet all these 
candied joys, which probably enhance a Mrs. Rundle's heaven, were as 
nothing in the. eyes of Simon — sweet trash, for all he cared they might 
be vulgar treacle. His ken saw nothing but the honey-pots — embarrass- 
ing array — a round dozen of them ! All alike, all posted in a brown line, 
like stout Dutch sentinels with their hands in their breeches pockets, and 
set aloft on that same high-reached shelf. Must he really take them all ? 
impracticable : a positive sack full. What 's to be done ? — which is he 
to leave behind? that old witch contrived this identity and multitude for 
safety's sake. But what if he left the wrong one, and got clear off with 
the valuable booty of two dozen pounds of honey? Confusion! that'll 
never do: he must take them all, or none; all, all's the word; and 
forthwith, as tenderly as possible, the puzzled thief took down eleven pots 
of honey to his one of gold — all pig-bladdered, all Fortnumed — all slimy 
at the string ; " Confound that cunning old aunt of mine," said Simon, 
aloud ; and took no notice that the snores surceased. 

Then did he spread upon the table a certain shawl, and set the crocks 
in order on it : and it was quite impossible to leave behind that pretty 
ostentatious "Savings' Bank," which the shrewd hoarder kept as a feint 
to lure thieves from her hidden gold, by an open exhibition of her silver: 
unluckily, though, the shillings, not being leathered up nor branned, 



(JQ THECROCKOFGOLD. 

rattled like a Mandarin toy, as the trembling hand of Jennings deposited 
the bank beside the crockeries — and, at the well-known sound, I observed 
(though Simon did not, as he was in a trance of addled triumph) or fan- 
cied I observed Mrs. Quarles's head move: but as she said nothing, 
perhaps I was mistaken. Thus stood Simon at the table, surveying his 
extraordinary spoils. 

And while he looked, the Mercy of God, which never yet hath seen 
the soul too guilty for salvation, spake to him kindly, and whispered in 
his ear, "Poor, deluded man — there is yet a moment for escape — flee 
from this temptation — put all back again — hasten to thy room, to thy 
prayers, repent, repent : even thou shalt be forgiven, and none but God, 
who will forgive thee, shall know of this bad crime. Tui'n now from all 
thy sins ; the gate of bliss is open, if thou wilt but lift the latch." 

It was one moment of irresolute delay ; on that hinge hung Eternity. 
The gate swung upon its pivot, that should shut out hell, or heaven ! 

Simon knit his brow — bit his nails — and answered quite out loud, 
" What ! and after all to lose the crock of gold ?" 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

MUEDEE. 

He had waked her ! 

In an instant the angel form of Mercy melted away — and there stood 
the devil with his arms folded. 

" Murder ! — fire ! — rape ! — thieves ! — what, Nephew Jennings, is that 
you, with all my honey pots? Help! help! help!" 

"Phew-w-w!" whistled the devil: "I tell you what, Master Simon, 
you must quiet the old woman, she bellows like a bull, the house '11 be 
about your ears in a twinkling — she'll hang you for this!" 

Yes — he must quiet her — the game was up ; he threatened, he implored, 
but she would shriek on ; she slept alone on the ground-floor, and knew 
she must roar loudly to be heard above the drawing-rooms ; she would 
not be quieted — she would shriek — and she did. What must he do? 
she '11 raise the house ! — Stop her mouth, stop her mouth, I say, can't 
you ? — No, she 's a powerful, stout, heavy woman, and he cannot hold 
her : ha ! she has bitten his finger to the bone, like a very tigress ! look 
at the blood ! 



THEREWARD. 97 

"Why can't you touch her throat; no teeth there, bless you! that's 
the way the whid comes : bravo! grasp it — tighter! tighter! tighter!" 

She struggled, and writhed, and wrestled, and fought — but all was stran- 
gling silence ; they rolled about the floor together, tumbled on the bed, 
scuffled round the room, but all in horrid silence ; neither uttered a sound, 
neither had a shoe on — but all was earnest, wicked, death-dealing silence. 

Ha! the desperate victim has the best of it; gripe harder, Jennings; 
she has twisted her fingers in your neckcloth, and you yourself are 
choking : fool ! squeeze the swallow, can't you ? try to make your 
fingers meet in the middle — lower down, lower down, grasp the gullet, 
not the ears, man — ^that's right; I told you so: tighter, tighter, tighter! 
again ; ha, ha, ha, bravo ! bravo ! — tighter, tighter, tighter ! 

At length the hideous fight was coming to an end — though a hungry 
constrictor, battling with the huge rhinoceros, and crushing his mailed 
ribs beneath its folds, could not have been so fiex'ce or fearful ; fewer 
now, and fainter are her struggles ; that face is livid blue — the eyes 
have started out, and goggle horribly; the tongue protrudes, swollen 
and black. Aha ! there is another convulsive effort — how strong she is 
still ! can you hold her, Simon ? — can he ? — All the fiend possessed him 
now with savage exultation : can he? — only look! gripe, gripe still, you 
are conquering, strong man ! she is getting weaker, weaker ; here is 
your reward, gold ! gold ! a mighty store uncounted ; one more grasp, 
and it is all your own — relent now, she hangs you. Come, make short 
work of it, break her neck — gripe harder — back with her, back with 
here against the bedstead : keep her down, down I say — she must not 
rise again. Crack ! went a little something in her neck — did you hear 
it? There's the death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp — what, 
didn't you hear that? 

And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE REWAED. 

Till the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was 
doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its 
wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A 
G 9 



98 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and one 
thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but the 
first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath (but for 
God's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been sealed — 
robbery, murder, false witness, and — damnation ! 

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevita- 
bly carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swinging tide, to the 
cataract of death and wo : haste, poor fisherman of Erie, paddle hard 
back, stem the torrent, cling to the shore, hold on tight by this friendly 
bough; know you not whither the headlong current drives? hear you 
not the roar of many waters, the maddening rush as of an ocean disen- 
thralled ? feel you not the earth trembling at the thunder — see you not 
the heaven clouded o'er with spray ? Helpless wretch — thy frail canoe 
has leapt that dizzy water-cliff", Niagara ! 

But if, in doing that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now 
that it was done — all still, all calm, all quiet. Terror held the hour-glass 
of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and cramped 
in the attitude of struggling agony ; and the murderer gazed upon his 
victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly! — he dared not stop to 
think: fly! fly! any whither — as you are — wait for nothing; fly! thou 
caitiflf, for thy life ! So he caught up the blood-bought spoils, and was 
fumbling with shaky fingers at the handle of the garden-door, when the 
unseen tempter whispered in his ear, 

" I say, Simon, did not your aunt die of apoplexy ?" 

O, kind and wise suggestion ! O, lightsome, tranquillizing thought ! 
Thanks! thanks! thanks! — And if the arch fiend had revealed himself 
in person at the moment, Simon would have worshipped at his feet. 

"But," and as he communed with his own black heart, there needed 
now no devil for his prompter — "if this matter is to be believed, I must 
contrive a little that it may look likelier. Let me see : — ^yes, we must 
lay all tidy, and the old witch shall have died in her sleep ; apoplexy ! 
capital indeed; no tell-tales either well, I must set to work." 

Can mortal mind conceive that sickening office? — To face the strangled 
corpse, yet warm ; to lift the fearful burden in his arms, and order out 
the heavily-yielding limbs in the ease of an innocent sleep ? To arrange 
the bed, smooth down the tumbled coverlid, set every thing straight about 
the room, and erase all tokens of that dread encounter? It needed nerves 
of iron, a heart all stone, a cool, clear head, a strong arm, a mindful, self- 
protecting spirit ; but all these requisites came to Simon's aid upon the 



THE REWARD. g0 

instant ; frozen up with fear, his heart-strings worked that puppet-man 
rigidly as wires ; guilt supplied a reckless energy, a wild physical 
power, which actuates no human frame but one saturate with crime, or 
madness ; and in the midst of those terrific details, the murderer's judg- 
ment was so calm and so collected, that nothing was forgotten, nothing 
unconsidered — unless, indeed, it were that he out-generalled himself by 
making all too tidy to be natural. Hence, suspicion at the inquest ; for 
the "apoplexy" thought was really such a good one, that, but for so exact 
a laying out, the fat old corpse might have easily been buried without 
one surmise of the way she met her end. Again and again, in the his- 
tory of crimes, it is seen that a "Judas hangs himself;" and albeit, as 
we know, the murderer has hitherto escaped detection, still his own dark 
hour shall arrive in its due place. 

The dreadful office done, he asked himself again, or maybe took 
counsel of the devil (for that evil master always cheats his servants), 
" What shall I do with my reward, this crock — ^these crocks of gold ? 
It might be easy to hide one of them, but not all ; and as to leaving any 
behind, that I won't do. About opening them to see which is which — " 

"I tell you what," said the tempter, as the clock struck three, "what- 
ever you do, make haste ; by morning's dawn the house and garden will 
be searched, no doubt, and the crocks found in your possession. Listen 
to me — I 'm your friend, bless you ! remember the apoplexy. Pike 
Island yonder is an unfrequented place ; take the punt, hide all there 
now, and go at your best leisure to examine afterwards ; but whatever 
you do, make haste, my man." 

Then Jennings crept out by the lawn-door, thereby rousing the house- 
dog; but he skirted the laurels in their shadow, and it was dark and 
mizzling, so he reached the punt both quickly and easily. 

The quiet, and the gloom, and the dropping rain, strangely aifected 
him now, as he plied his punt-pole ; once he could have wept in his 
remorse, and another time he almost shrieked in fear. How lonesome 
it seemed ! how dreadful ! and that death-dyed face behind him — ha ! 
woman, away I say ! But he neared the island, and, all shoeless as he 
was, crept up its muddy bank. 

" Hallo ! ny bor, who be you a-poaching on my manor, eh ? that bean't 
good manners, any how." 

Ben Burke has told us all the rest. 

But, when Burke had got his spoils — when the biter had been bitten 
— ^the robber robbed — the murderer stripped of his murdered victim's 



100 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

money — when the bereaved miscreant, sullenly returning in the dark, 
damp night, tracked again the way he came upon that lonely lake — no 
one yet has told us, none can rightly tell, the feelings which oppressed 
that God-forsaken man. He seemed to feel himself even a sponge which, 
the evil one had bloated with his breath, had soaked it then in blood, had 
squeezed it dry again, and flung away ! He was Satan's broken tool — 
a weed pulled up by the roots, and tossed upon the fire ; alone — alone 
in all the universe, without countenance or sympathy from God, or man, 
or devil ; he yearned to find, were it but a fiend to back him, but in vain ; 
they held aloof, he could see them vaguely through the gloom — he could 
hear them mocking him aloud among the patter of the rain-drops — ha ! 
ha ! ha — the pilfered fool ! 

Bitterly did he rue his crime — fearfully he thought upon its near dis- 
covery — madly did he beat his miserable breast, to find that he had been 
baulked of his reward, yet spent his soul to earn it. 

Oh — when the house-dog bayed at him returning, how he wished he 
was that dog ! he went to him, speaking kindly to him, for he envied that 
dog — "Good dog-r-good dog!" 

But more than envy kept him lingering there : the wretched man dia 
it for delay — yes, though morn was breaking on the hills — one more — 
one more moment of most precious time. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

SECOND THOUGHTS. 

For — again he must go through that room ! 

No other entrance is open — not a window, not a door : all close as a 
prison : and only by the way he went, by the same must he return. 

He trembled all over, as a palsied man, when he touched the lock : 
with stiffening hair, and staring eyes, he peeped in at that well-remem- 
bered chamber: he entered — and crept close up to the corpse, stealthily 
and dreadingly — horror! what if she be alive still? 

She was. 

Not quite dead — not quite dead yet ! a gurgling in the bruised throat — 
a shadowy gleam of light and life in those protruded eyes — an irregular 



SECOND THOUGHTS. 101 

convulsive heaving at the chest : she might recover ! what a fearful hope : 
and, if she did, would hang him — ha ! he went nearer ; she was mutter- 
ing something in a moanful way — it was, " Simon did it — Simon did it — 
Simon did it — Si — Si — Simon did — " he should be found out! 

Yet once again, for the last time, the long-suffering Mercy of the Lord 
stood like Balaam's angel in the way, pleading with that miserable man 
at the bed-side of her whom he had strangled. And even then, that 
Guardian Spirit came not with chiding on his tongue, but He uttered 
words of hope, while his eyes were streaming with sorrow and with pity. 

"Most wretched of the sinful sons of men, even now there may be 
mercy for thee, even now plenteous forgiveness. True, thou must die, 
and pay the earthly penalty of crimes like thine : but do my righteous 
bidding, and thy soul shall live. Go to that poor, suffocating creature — 
cherish the spark of life — bind up the wounds which thou hast rent, 
pouring in oil and wine: rouse the house — seek assistance — save her 
life — confess thy sin — repent — and though thou diest for this before tlie 
tribunal of thy fellows, God will yet be gracious — he will raise again 
her whom thou hadst slain — and will cleanse thy blood-stained soul." 

Thus in Simon's ear spake that better conscience. 

But the reprobate had cast off Faith; he could not pledge the Present 
for the Future ; he shuddered at the sword of Justice, and would not 
touch the ivory sceptre of Forgiveness. No : he meditated horrid iter- 
ation — and again the fiend possessed him ! What ! not only lose the 
crock of gold, but all his own bright store ? and give up every tiling of 
this world's good for some imaginary other, and meekly confess, and 
meanly repent — and — and all this to resuscitate that hated old aunt of 
his, who would hang him, and divorce him from his gold ? 

No! he must do the deed again — see, she is moving — she will 
recover! her chest heaves visibly — she breathes — she speaks — she 
knows me — ha! down — down, I say! 

Then, with deliberate and damning resolution — to screen off temporal 
danger, and count his golden hoards a little longer — that awful criminal 
touched the throat again : and he turned his head away not to see that 
horrid face, clutched the swollen gullet with his icy hands, and strangled 
her once more! 

"This time all is safe," said Simon. And having set all smooth as 
before, he stole up to his own chamber. 

9* 



102 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

MAilMON, AND CONTENTMENT. 

Ay, safe enough : and the murderer went to bed. To bed ? No. 

He tumbled about the clothes, to make it seem that he had lain there : 
but he dared neither lie down, nor shut his eyes. Then, the darkness 
terrified him : the out-door darkness he could have borne, and Mrs. 
Quarles's chamber always had a night-lamp burning : but the darkness 
of his own room, of his own thoughts, pressed him all around, as with a 
thick, murky, suffocating vapour. So, he stood close by the window, 
watching the day-break. 

As for sleep, never more did wholesome sleep revisit that atrocious 
mind : laudanum, an ever-increasing dose of merciless laudanum, that 
was the only power which ever seemed to soothe him. For a horrid 
vision always accompanied him now : go where he might, do what he 
would, from that black morning to eternity, he went a haunted man — a 
scared, sleepless, horror-stricken wretch. That livid face with goggling 
eyes, stuck to him like a shadow ; he always felt its presence, and some- 
times, also, could perceive it as if bodily peeping over his shoulder, next 
his cheek; it dogged him by day, and was his incubus by night; and 
often he would start and wrestle, for the desperate grasp of the dying 
appeared to be clutching at his throat : so, in his ghostly fears, and bloody 
conscience, he had girded round his neck a piece of thin sheet-iron in 
his cravat, which he wore continually as armour against those clammy 
Insers : no wonder that he held his head so stiff. 

O Gold — accursed Mammon ! is this the state of those who love thee 
deepest? is this their joy, who desire thee with all their heart and soul — 
who serve thee with all their might — who toil for thee — plot for thee — 
live for thee — dare for thee — die for thee ? Hast thou no better bliss to 
give thy martyrs — no choicer comfort for thy most consistent worship, 
pers, no fairer fate for those, whose waking thoughts, and dreaming 
hopes, and intricate schemes, and desperate deeds, were only aimed at 
gold, more gold? God of this world, if such be thy rewards, let me ever 
escape them ! idol of the knave, false deity of the fool, if this be thy 
blessing on thy votaries — come, curse me. Mammon, curse thou me! 

For, "The love of money is the root of all evil." It groweth up a 



MAMMON AND CONTENTMENT. jqS 

little plant of coveting ; presently the leaves get rank, the branches spread, 
and feed on petty thefts ; then in their early season come the blossoms, 
black designs, plots, involved and undeveloped yet, of foul conspiracies, 
extortions on the weak, rich robbings of the wealthy, the threatened slan- 
der, the rewarded lie, malice, perjury, sacrilege ; then speedily cometh on 
the climax, the consummate flower, dark-red murder : and the fruit bear- 
ing in itself the seeds that never die, is righteous, wrathful condemnation. 

Dyed with all manner of iniquity, tinged with many colours like the 
Mohawk in his woods, goeth forth in a morning the covetous soul. His 
cheek is white with envy, his brow black with jealous rage, his livid lips 
are full of lust, his thievish hands spotted over with the crimson drops 
of murder. "The poison of asps is under his lips; and his feet are 
swift to shed blood : destruction and misery are in his ways ; and there 
is no fear of God before his eyes." 

O, ye thousands — the covetous of this world's good — behold at what a 
fire ye do warm yourselves! dread it: even now, ye have imagined 
many deaths, whereby your gains may be the greater ; ye have caught, 
in wishful fancy, many a parting sigh ; ye have closed, in a heartless 
revery, many a glazing eye — yea, of those your very nearest, whom 
your hopes have done to death : and are ye guiltless ? God and con- 
science be your judges ! 

Even now ye have compassed many frauds, connived at many mean- 
nesses, trodden down the good, and set the bad on high — all for gold — 
hard gold ; and are ye the honest — the upright ? Speak out manfully 
your excuse, if you can find one, ye respectables of merchandise, ye 
traders, bartering all for cash, ye Scribes, ye Pharisees, hypocrites, all 
honourable men. 

Even now, your dreams are full of money-bags ; your cares are how 
to add superfluity to wealth ; ye fawn upon the rich, ye scorn the poor, 
ye pine and toil both night and day for gold, more gold ; and are ye 
happy ? Answer me, ye covetous ones. 

Yet are there righteous gains, God's blessing upon labour : yet is there 
rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor 
man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter ? And who 
will extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what 
it feeds on ? " Having food and raiment, be therewith content ;" that is 
the golden mean ; to that is limited the philosophy of worldliness : the 
man must live, by labour and its earnings ; but having wherewithal for 
him and his temperately, let him tie the mill-stone of anxiety to the wing 
of Faith, and speed that burden to his God. 



104 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

If Wealth come, beware of him, the smooth false friend : there is 
treachery in his proffered hand, his tongue is eloquent to tempt, lust of 
many harms is lurking in his eye, he hath a hollow heart ; use him 
cautiously. 

If Penury assail, fight against him stoutly, the gaunt grim foe : the 
curse of Cain is on his brow, toiling vainly ; he creepeth with the worm 
by day, to raven with the wolf by night : diseases battle by his side, and 
crime followeth his footsteps. Therefore fight against him boldly, and 
be of a good courage, for there are many with thee ; not alone the doled 
alms, the casual aids dropped from compassion, or wrung out by impor- 
tunity ; these be only temporary helps, and indulgence in them pampers 
the improvident; but look thou to a better host of strong allies, of reso- 
lute defenders ; turn again to meet thy duties, needy one : no man ever 
starved, who even faintly tried to do them. Look to thy God, O sinner ! 
use reason wisely ; cherish honour ; shrink not from toil, though some- 
while unrewarded ; preserve frank bearing with thy fellows ; and in spite 
of all thy sins — forgiven ; all thy follies — flung away ; all the trickeries 
of this world — scorned ; all competitions — disregarded ; all suspicions — 
trodden under foot ; thou neediest and raggedest of labourers' labourers 
— Enough shall be thy portion, ere a week hath passed away. 

Well did Agur-the-Wise counsel Ithiel and Ucal his disciples, when 
he uttered in their ears before his God, this prayerful admonition, " Two 
things have I required of Thee ; deny me them not before I die : remove 
far from me vanity and lies ; give me neither poverty nor riches : feed 
me with food convenient for me. Lest I be full, and deny Thee, saying, 
Who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor, and steal, and dishonour the name 
of the Lord my God." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

NEXT HORNING. 

Day dawned apace; and a glorious cavalcade of flaming clouds 
heralded the Sun their captain. From far away, round half the wide 
horizon, their glittering spears advanced. Heaven's highway rang with 
the trampling of their horse-hoofs, and the dust went up from its jewelled 



NEXT MORNING. 105 

pavement as spray from the bottom of a cataract. Anon, he came, the 
chieftain of that on-spurring host ! his banner blazed upon the sky ; his 
golden crest was seen beneath, nodding with its ruddy plumes ; over the 
south-eastern hills he arose in radiant armour. Fair Nature, waking 
at her bridegroom's voice, arrived so early from a distant clime, smiled 
upon him sleepily, gladdening him in beauty with her sweet half-opened 
eyelids, and kissing him in faithfulness with dew-besprinkled lips. 

And he looked forth upon the world from his high chariot, holding 
back the coursers that must mount the steep of noon: and he heard the 
morning hymn of thankfulness to Heaven from the mountains, and the 
valleys, and the islands of the sea ; the prayer of man and woman, the 
praise of lisping tongues, the hum of insect joy upon the air, the sheep- 
bell tinkling in the distance, the wild bird's carol, and the lowing kine, the 
mute minstrelsy of rising dews, and that stilly scarce-heard universal mel- 
ody of wakeful plants and trees, hastening to turn their spring-buds to the 
light — this was the anthem he, the Lord of Day, now listened to — this 
was the song his influences had raised to bless the God who made him. 

And he saw, from his bright throne of wide derivative glory, Hope 
flying forth upon her morning missions, visiting the lonesome, comforting 
the sorrowful, speaking cheerfully to Care, and singing in the ear of 
Labour : and he watched that ever-welcome friend, flitting with the 
gleams of light to every home, to every heart; none but gladly let her 
in ; her tapping finger opened the very prison doors ; the heavy head of 
Sloth rejoiced to hear her call ; and every common Folly, every com- 
mon Sin — ay, every common Crime — warmed his unconscious soul 
before her winning beauty. 

Yet, yet was there one, who cursed that angel's coming ; and the holy 
Eye of day wept pityingly to see an awful child of man who dared not 
look on Hope. 

The murderer stood beside his casement, watching that tranquil 
scene : with bloodshot eyes and haggard stare, he gazed upon the 
waking world ; for one strange minute he forgot, entranced by inno- 
cence and beauty ; but when the stunning tide of memory, that had 
ebbed that one strange minute, rolled back its mighty flood upon his 
mind, the murderer swooned away. 

And he came to himself again all too soon ; for when he arose, building 
up his weak, weak limbs, as if he were a column of sand, the cruel giant. 
Guilt, lifted up his club, and felled the wretch once more. 

How long he lay fainting, he knew not then ; if any one had vowed 



106 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

it was a century, Simon, as he gradually woke, could not have gainsaid 
the man ; but he only lay four seconds in that white oblivious trance — 
for Fear, Fear knocked at his heart : — Up, man, up ! — you need have 
all your wits about you now ; — see, it is broad day — the house will be 
roused before you know where you are, and then will be shouted out 
that awful name — Simon Jennings! Simon Jennings! 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE AIAEM. 

He arose, held up on either hand that day as if fighting against Ama- 
lek; — despair buttressed him on one side, and secresy shored him on the 
other : behind that wall of stone his heart had strength to beat. 

He arose ; and listened at the key-hole anxiously : all silent, quiet, 
quiet still ; the whole house asleep : nothing found out yet. And he bit 
his nails to the quick, that they bled again : but he never felt the pain. 

Hush ! — yes, somebody 's about : it is Jonathan's step ; and hark, he 
is humming merrily, " Hail, smiling morn, that opes the gates of day ?" 
Wo, wo — what a dismal gulph between Jonathan and me ! And he 
beat his breast miserably. But, Jonathan cannot find it out — he never 
goes to Mrs. Quarles's room. Oh ! this suspense is horrible : haste, 
haste, some kind soul, to make the dread discovery ! And he tore his 
hair away by handfulls. 

"Hark! — somebody else — unlatching shutters; it will be Sarah — ha! 
she is tapping at the housekeeper's room — yes, yes, and she will make 
it known, O terrible joy ! — A scream ! it is Sarah's voice — she has seen 
her dead, dead, dead ; — but is she indeed dead ?" 

The miscreant quivered with new fears ; she might still mutter 
"Simon did it!" 

And now the house is thoroughly astir ; running about in all directions ; 
and shouting for help ; and many knocking loudly at the murderer's own 
door — "Mr. Jennings! Mr. Jennings! — quick — get up — come down — 
quick, quick — your aunt's found dead in her bed!" 

What a relief to the trembling wretch ! — she was dead. He could 
have blessed the voice that told him his dread secret was so safe. But 



THE ALARM. 107 

his parched tongue may never bless again : curses, curses are all its 
blessings now. 

And Jennings came out calmly from his chamber, a white, stern, 
sanctimonious man, lulling the storm with his wise presence : — " God's 
will be done," said he; "what can poor weak mortals answer Him?" 
And he played cleverly the pious elder, the dignified official, the affec- 
tionate nephew : " Ah, well, my humble friends, behold what life is : 
the best of us must come to this ; my poor, dear aunt, the late house- 
keeper, rest her soul — I feared it might be this way some night or other : 
she was a stout woman, was our dear, deceased Bridget — and, though a 
good kind soul, lived much on meat and beer: ah well, ah well !" And 
he concealed his sentimental hypocrisy in a cotton pocket-handkerchief. 

"Alas, and well-a-day ! that it should have come to this. Apoplexy — 
you see, apoplexy caught her as she slept : we may as well get her buried 
at once : it is unfortunately too clear a case for any necessity to open the 
body ; and our young master is coming down on Tuesday, and I could 
not allow my aunt's corpse to be so disrespectful as to stop till it became 
offensive. I will go to the vicar myself immediately." 

"Begging pardon, Mr. Jennings," urged Jonathan Floyd, "there's a 
strange mark here about the throat, poor old 'ooman." 

"Ay," added Sarah, "and now I come to think of it, Mrs. Quarles's 
room-door was ajar; and bless me, the lawn-door's not locked neither! 
Who could have murdered her?" 

" Murdered ? there 's no murder here, silly wench," said Jennings, 
with a nervous sneer. 

"I don't know that, Mr. Simon," gruffly interposed the coachman; 
" it 's a case for a coroner, I '11 be bail ; so here I goes to bring him : let 
all bide as it is, fellow-sarvents ; murder will out, they say." 

And off he set directly — not without a shrewd remark from Mr. Jen- 
nings, about letting him escape that way ; which seemed all very sage 
and likely, till the honest man came back within the hour, and a posse 
comitatiis at his heels. 

We all know the issue of that inquest. 

Now, if any one requests to be informed how Jennings came to be 
looked for as usual in his room, after that unavailing search last night, 
I reply, this newer, stronger excitement for the minute made the house 
oblivious of that mystery ; and if people further will persist to know, 
how that mystery of his absence was afterwards explained (though I for 
my part would gladly have said nothing of the bailiff's own excuse), let 



108 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

it be enough to hint, that Jennings winked with a knowing and gallant 
expression of face ; alluded to his private key, and a secret return at 
two in the morning from some disreputable society in the neighbourhood ; 
made the men laugh, and the women blush ; and, altogether, as he might 
well have other hats and coats, the delicate affair was not unlikely. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

DOUBTS. 

And so, this crock of gold — gained through extortion, by the frauds 
of every day, the meannesses of every hour — this concrete oppression 
to the hireling in his wages — this mass of petty pilferings from poverty — 
this continuous obstruction to the charities of wealth — this cockatrice's 
egg — this offspring of iniquity — had already been baptized in blood 
before poor Acton found it, and slain its earthly victim ere it wrecked 
his faith ; already had it been perfected by crime, and destroyed the 
murderer's soul, before it had endangered the life of slandered innocence. 

Is there yet more blessing in the crock ? more fearful interest still, to 
carry on its story to an end? Must another sacrifice bleed before the 
shrine of Mammon, and another head lie crushed beneath the heel of 
that monster — his disciple ? 

Come on with me, and see the end ; push further still, there is a labyrinth 
ahead to attract and to excite ; from mind to mind crackles the electric 
spark : and when the heart thrillingly conceives, its children-thoughtf! 
are as arrows from the hand of the giant, flying through that mental 
world — the hearts of other men. Fervent still from its hot internal 
source, this fountain gushes up; no sluggish Lethe-stream is here, dull, 
forgetful, and forgotten ; but liker to the burning waves of Phlegethon, 
mingling at times (though its fire is still unquenched), with the pastoral 
rills of Tempe, and the River from the Mount of God. 

Lower the sail — let it flap idly on the wind — helm a-port — and so to 
smoother waters : return to common life and humbler thoughts. 

It may yet go hard with Roger Acton. Jennings is a man of char- 
acter, especially the farther from his home ; the county round take him 
for a model of propriety, a sample of the strictest conduct. We know 



DOUBTS.— FEARS. jQg 

the bad man better ; but who dare breathe against the bailiff in his power — 
against the caitiff in his sleek hypocrisy — that, while he makes a show 
of both humilities, he fears not God nor man? What shall hinder, that 
the perjured wretch offer up to the manes of the murdered the life-blood 
of the false-accused? May he not live yet many years, heaping up 
gold and crime ? And may not sweet Grace Acton — her now repentant 
father — the kindly Jonathan — his generous master, and if there be any 
other of the Hurstley folk we love, may they not all meet destruction at 
his hands, as a handful of corn before the reaper's sickle? I say not 
that they shall, but that they might. Acton's criminal state of mind, and 
his hunger after gold — gold any how — have earned some righteous retri- 
bution, unless Providence in mercy interpose ; and young Sir John, in 
nowise unblameable himself, with wealth to tempt the spoiler, lives in 
the spoiler's very den ; and as to Jonathan and Grace, this world has 
many martyrs. If Heaven in its wisdom use the wicked as a sword. 
Heaven is but just; but if in its vengeance that sword of the wicked is 
turned against himself. Heaven showeth mercy all unmerited. To a 
criminal like Jennings, let loose upon the world, without the clog of con- 
science to retard him, and with the spur of covetousness ever urging on, 
any thing in crime is possible — is probable : none can sound those depths : 
and when we raise our eyes on high to the Mighty Moral Governor, and 
note the clouds of mystery that thunder round his Throne — He may per- 
mit, or he may control ; who shall reach those heights ? 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

PEARS. 

Moreover, innocent of blood, as we know Roger Acton to be, appear- 
ances are strongly against him : and in such a deed as secret, midnight 
murder, which none but God can witness, multiplied appearances justify 
the world in condemning one who seems so guilty. 

The first impression against Roger is a bad one, for all the neighbours 
know how strangely his character had been changing for the worse of late : 
he is not like the same man ; sullen and insubordinate, he was turned 
away from work for his bold and free demeanor; as to church, though 

10 



no THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

he had worn that little path these forty years, all at once he seems to 
have entirely forgotten the way hither. 

He lives, nobody knows how^-on bright, clean gold, nobody knows 
whence : his daughter says, indeed, that her father found a crock of gold 
in his garden — but she needs not have held her tongue so long, and borne 
so many insults, if that were all the truth ; and, mark this ! even though 
she says it, and declares it on her Bible-oath, Acton himself most strenu- 
ously denied all such findings — but went about with impudent tales of 
legacy, luck, nobody knows what; the man prevaricated continually, and 
got angry when asked about it — cudgelling folks, and swearing like — 
like any one but old-time "honest Roger." 

Only look, too, where he lives : in a lone cottage opposite Pike Island, 
on the other side of which is Hurstley Hall, the scene of robbery and 
murder: was not a boat seen that night upon the lake? and was not the 
lawn-door open? How strangely stupid in the coroner and jury not to 
have imagined this before ! how dull it was of every body round not to 
have suspected murder rather more strongly, with those finger-marks 
about the throat, and not to have opened their eyes a little wider, when the 
murderer's cottage was within five hundred yards of that open lawn-door ! 

Then again — when Mr. Jennings, in his strict and searching way, 
accused the culprit, he never saw a man so confused in all his life ! and 
on repeating the charge before those two constables, they all witnessed 
his guilty consternation : experienced men, too, they were, and never 
saw a felon if Acton wasn't one ; the dogged manner in which he went 
with them so quietly was quite sufficient; innocent men don't go to jail 
in that sort of way, as if they well deserved it. 

But, strongest of all, if any shadow of a doubt remained, the most 
fearful proof of Roger's guilt lay in the scrap of shawl — the little leather 
bags — and the very identical crock of gold ! There it was, nestled in the 
thatch within a yard of his head, as he lay in bed at noon-day guarding it. 

One proof, weaker than the weakest of all these banded together, has 
ere now sufficed to hang the guilty ; and many, many fears have I that 
this multitude of seeming facts, conspiring in a focus against Roger Acton, 
will be quite enough to overwhelm the innocent. "Nothing lies like a 
fact," said Dr. Johnson : and statistics prove it, at least as well as cir- 
cumstantial evidence. 

The matter was as clear as day-light, and long before the trial came 
about, our poor labourer had been hanged outright in the just judgment 
of Hurstley-cum-Piggesworth. 



PRISON COMFORTS. HI 

CHAPTER XXXVI 

PRISON COMPORTS. 

Many blessings, more than he had skill to count, had visited poor Acton 
in his cell. His gentle daughter Grace, sweet minister of good thoughts — 
she, like a loving angel, had been God's instrument of penitence and peace 
to him. He had come to himself again, in solitude, by nights, as a man 
awakened from a feverish dream ; and the hallowing ministrations of her 
company by day had blest reflective solitude with sympathy and counsel. 
Good-wife Mary, too, had been his comforting and cheering friend. 
Immediately the crock of gold had been taken from its ambush in the 
thatch, it seemed as if the chill which had frozen up her heart had been 
melted by a sudden thaw. Roger Acton was no longer the selfish prod- 
igal, but the guiltless, persecuted penitent ; her care was now to soothe 
his griefs, not to scold him for excesses ; and indignation at the false and 
bloody charge made him appear a martyr in her eyes. As to his accuser, 
Jennings, Mary had indeed her own vague fancies and suspicions, but 
there being no evidence, nor even likelihood to support them, she did not 
dare to breathe a word ; she might herself accuse him falsely. Ben, 
who alone could have thrown a light upon the matter, had always been 
comparatively a stranger at Hurstley ; he was no native of the place, 
and had no ties there beyond wire and whip-cord : he would appear in 
that locality now and then in his eccentric orbit, like a comet, and, soon 
departing thence, would take away Tom as his tail ; but even when there, 
he was mainly a night-prowler, seldom seen by day, and so little versed 
in village lore, so rarely mingling with its natives, that neither Jennings 
nor Burke knew one another by sight. His fame indeed was known, 
but not his person. At present, he and Tom were still fowling in some 
distant fens, nobody could tell where ; so that Roger's only witness, who 
might have accounted for the crock and its finding, was as good as dead 
to him ; to make Ben's absence more unusually prolonged, and his reap- 
pearance quite incalculable, he had talked of going with his cargo of 
wild ducks "either to London or to Liverpool, he didn't rightly 
know which." 

Nevertheless, Mary comforted her husband, and more especially her- 
self, by the hope of his return as a saving witness ; though it was always 



112 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

doubtful how far Burke's numerous peccadilloes against property would 
either iind him at large, or authorize the poacher in walking straight 
before the judges. Still Ben's possible interposition was one source of 
hope and cheerful expectation. Then the good wife would leave her 
babes at home, safely in a neighbour's charge, and stay and sit many 
long hours with poor Roger, taking turns with Grace in talking to him 
tenderly, making little of home-troubles past, encouraging him to wear 
a stout heart, and filling him with gratitude for all her kindly care. 
Thus did she bless, and thus was made a blessing, through the loss and 
absence of that crock of gold. 

For Roger himself, he had repented ; bitterly and deeply, as became 
his headlong fall : no sweet luxuries of grief, no soothing sorrow, no 
chastened meditative melancholy — such mild penitence as this, he 
thought, could be but a soberer sort of joy for virgins, saints, and mar- 
tyrs: no — he, bad man, was unworthy of those melting pleasures, and 
in sturdy self-revenge he flung them from him, choosing rather to feel 
overwhelmed with shame, contrition, and reproaches. A humbled man 
with a broken heart within him — such was our labourer, penitent in prison ; 
and when he contrasted his peaceful, pure, and Christian course those 
forty years of poverty, with his blasphemous and infidel career for the 
one bad week of wealth, he had no patience with himself — only felt his 
fall the greater; and his judgment of his own guilt, with a natural 
exaggeration, went the length of saying — I am scarcely less guilty 
before God and man, than if, indeed, my hands were red with murder, 
and my casual finding had been robbery. He would make no strong 
appeals to the bar of justice, as an innocent condemned ; not he — not 
he : innocent, indeed ? his wicked, wicked courses — (an old man, too — 
gray-headed, with no young blood in him to excuse, no inexperience to 
extenuate), these deserved — did he say hanging? it was a harsher syl- 
lable — hell : and the contrite sinner gladly would have welcomed all the 
terrors of the gibbet, in hope to take full vengeance on himself for his 
wicked thirst for gold and all its bitter consequences. 



GOOD COUNSEL. 113 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

GOOD COUNSEL. 

But Grace advised him better. "Be humbled as you may before 
God, my father, but stand up boldly before man : for in his sight, and 
by his law, you are little short of blameless. I would not, dearest father, 
speak to you of sins, except for consolation under them ; for it ill becomes 
a child to see the failings of a parent. But when I know at once how 
innocent you are in one sense, and how not quite guiltless in another, I 
wish my words may comfort you, if you will hear them, father. 
Covetousness, not robbery — excess, not murder — these were your only 
sins ; and concealment was not wise, neither was a false report befitting. 
Money, the idol of millions, was your temptation : its earnest love, your 
fault; its possession, your misfortune. Forgive me, father, if I speak 
too freely. Good Mr. Evans, who has been so kind to us for years, 
(never kinder than since you were in prison,) can speak better than I 
may, of sins forgiven, and a Friend to raise the fallen: it is not fur poor 
Grace to school her dear and lionoured father. If you feel yourself 
guilty of much evil in the sight of Him before whom the angels bov/ 
in meekness — I need not tell you that your sorrow is most wise, and 
well-becoming. But this must not harm your cause with men : though 
tired of life, though hopeless in one's self, though bad, and weak, and 
like to fall again, we are still God's servants upon earth, bound to guard 
the life he gives us. Neither must you liglitly allovv tlic guilt of unright- 
eous condemnation to fall upon the judge who tries you ; nor let your* 
innocent blood cry to God for vengeance on your native land. Manfully 
confront the false accuser, tell openly the truth, plead your own cause 
firmly, warmly, wisely: — so, God defend the right!" 

And as Grace Acton said these words, in all the fervour of a daughter's 
love, with a flushed cheek, parted lips, and her right hand raised to Him 
whom she invoked, she looked like an inspired prophetess, or the fair 
maid of Orleans leading on to battle. 

In an instant afterwards, she humbly added, 

"Forgive me any thing I may have said, that seems to chide my 
father." 

"Bless 5^ou, bless you, dearest one!" was Roger's sobbing prayer, 
H 10* 



714 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

who had listened to her wisdom breathlessly. "Ah, daughter," then 
exclaimed the humbled, happy man, "I'll try to do all you ask me, 
Grace; but it is a hard thing to feel myself so wicked, and to have to 
speak up boldly like a Christian man." 



•*• 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

EXPERIENCE. 

Then, with disjointed sentences, suited to the turmoil of his thoughts, 
half in a soliloquy, half as talking to his daughter, Roger Acton gave 
his hostile testimony to the worth of wealth. 

'* Oh, fool, fool that I have been, to set so high a price on gold ! To 
have hungered and thirsted for it — to have coveted earnestly so bad a gift 
— to have longed for Mammon's friendship, which is enmity with God ! 
What has not money cost me ? Happiness : — ay, wasn't it to have given 
me happiness? and the little that 1 had (it was much, Grace, not little, 
very much — too much — God be praised for it!) all, all the happiness I 
had, gold took away. Look at our dear old home — shattered and scat- 
tered, as now I wish that crock had been. Health, too ; were it not for 
gold, and all gold gave, I had been sturdy still, and capable ; but my 
nights maddened with anxieties, my days worried with care, my head 
feverish with drink, my heart rent by conscience — ah, my girl, my girl, 
when I thought much of poverty and its hardships, of toil, and hunger, 
and rheumatics, I little imagined that wealth had heavier cares and 
pains : I envied them their wanton life of pleasure at the Hall, and little 
knew how hard it was: well are they called hard-livers who drink, and 
game, and have nothing to do, except to do wickedness continually. 
Religion — can it bide with money, child? I never knew my wicked 
heart, till fortune made me rich ; not until then did I guess how base, 
lying, false, and bad was "honest Roger;" how sensual, coarse, and 
brutal, was that hypocrite "steady Acton." Money is a devil, cliild, or 
pretty near akin. Then I complained of toil, too, didn't I? — .\h, what 
are all the aches I ever felt — labouring with spade and spud in cold and 
rain, hungry belike, and faint withal — what are they all at tiieir worst 
(and the worst was very seldom after all), to the gnawing care.s, tlio 



JONATHAN'S TROTH. 115 

hideous fears, the sins — the sins, my girl, that tore your poor old. father? 
Wasn't it to be an end of troubles, too, this precious crock of gold ? Wo 's 
me, I never knew real trouble till I had it! Look at me, and judge; 
what has made me live like a beast, sin like a heathen, and lie down here 
like a felon ? what has made me curse Ben Burke — kind, hearty, friendly 
Ben? — and given my poor good boy an ill-report as having stolen and 
slain? all this crock of gold. But O, my Grace, to think that the crock'a 
curses touched thee, too ! didn't it madden me to hear them ? Dear, pure, 
patient child, my darling, injured daughter, here upon my knees I pray, 
forgive that wrong!" And he fell at her feet beseechingly. 

"My father," said the noble girl, lifting up his head, and passionately 
kissing it; "when they whispered so against me, and Jonathan heard the 
wicked things men said, I would have borne it all, all in silence, and let 
tliem all believe me bad, father, if I could have guessed that by uttering 
the truth, I should have seen thee here, in a dungeon, treated as a — 
murderer! How was I to tell that men could be so base, as to charge 
such crimes upon the innocent, when his only fault, or his misfortune, 
was to find a crock of gold ? Oh ! forgive me, too, this wrong, my father !" 

And they wept in each other's arms. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

JONATHAN'S TROTH. 

Grace had been all but an inmate of the prison, ever since her father 
had been placed there on suspicion. Early and late, and often in the 
day, was the duteous daughter at his cell, for the governor and the turn- 
keys favoured her. Who could resist such beauty and affection, entreating 
to stay with a father about to stand on trial for his life, and making every 
effort to be allowed only to pray with him ? Thus did Grace spend all 
the week before those dread assizes. 

As to her daily maintenance, ever since that bitter morning when the 
crock was found, her spiritual fears had obliged her to abstain from 
touching so much as one penny of that unblest store ; and, seeing that 
honest pride would not let her be supported by grudged and common 
charity, she had thankfully suffered the wages of her now betrothed 



116 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

Jonathan to serve as means whereon she lived, and (what cost more 
than all her humble wants) whereby she could administer many little 
comforts to her father in his prison. When she was not in the cell, 
Grace was generally at the Hall, to the scandal of more than one Hurst- 
leyan gossip ; but perhaps they did not know how usually kind Sarah 
Stack was of the company, to welcome her with Jonathan, and play pro- 
priety. Sarah was a true friend, one for adversity, and though young 
herself, and not ill-looking, did not envy Grace her handsome lover ; on 
the contrary, she did all to make them happy, and had gone the friendly 
length of insisting to find Grace and her family in tea and sugar, while 
all this lasted. I like that much in Sarah Stack. 

However, the remainder of the virtuous woi'ld were not so considerate, 
nor so charitable. Many neighbours shunned the poor girl, as if con- 
taminated by the crimes which Roger had undoubtedly committed : the 
more elderly unmarried sisterhood, as we have chronicled already, were 
overjoyed at the precious opportunity : — Here was the pert vixen, whom 
all the young fellows so shamelessly followed, turned out, after all, a 
murderer's daughter; — they wished her joy of her eyes, and lips, and 
curls, and pretty speeches : no good ever came of such naughty ways, 
that the men liked so." 

Nay, even the tipsy crew at Bacchus's affected to treat her name with 
scorn : — " The girl had made much noise about being called a trull, 
as if many a better than she wasn't one ; and, after all, what was the 
prudish wench ? a sort of she-butcher ; they had no patience wdth her 
proud looks." 

As to farmer Floyd, he made a great stir about his boy being about 
to marry a felon's daughter; and the affectionate mother, with many 
elaborate protestations, had "vowed to Master Jonathan, that she would 
rather lay him out with her own hands, and a penny on each eye, than 
see a Floyd disgrace himself in that 'ere manner." 

And uncles, aunts, and cousins, most disinterestedly exhorted that the 
obstinate youth be disinherited — " Ay, Mr. Floyd, I wish your son was 
a high-minded man like his father ; but there 's a difference, Mr. Floyd ; 
I wish he had your true blue yeoman's honour, and the spirit that 
becomes his father's son : if the lad was mine, I 'd cut him off with a 
shilling, to buy a halter for his drab of a wife. Dang it, Mrs. Floyd, 
it'll never do to see so queer a Mrs. Jonathan Junior, a standing in your 
tidy shoes beside this kitchen dresser." 

These estimable counsels were, I grieve to say. of too flattering a 



JONATHAN'S TROTH. 117 

nature to displease, and of too lucrative a quality not to be continually 
repeated; until, really, Jonathan was threatened with beggary and the 
paternal malediction, if he would persist in his disreputable attachment. 

Nevertheless, Jonathan clung to the right like a hero. 

" Granting poor Acton is the wretch you think — but I do not believe 
one word of it — does his crime make his daughter wicked too? No; 
she is an angel, a pure and blessed creature, far too good for such a one 
as I. And happy is the man that has gained her love; he should not 
give her up were she thrice a felon's daughter. My father and mother," 
Jonathan went on to say, "never found a fault in her till now. Who 
was more welcome on the hill than pretty Grace? who would oftenest 
come to nurse some sickly lamb, but gentle Grace? who was wont, from 
lier childhood up, to run home with me so constantly, when school was 
over, and pleased my kinsfolk so entirely with her nice manners and 
kind ways? Hadn't he fought for her more than once, and though he 
came home with bruises on his face, his mother praised him for it?" 
Then, with a natural divergence from the strict subject-matter of objec- 
tion, vicarious felony, Jonathan went on to argue about other temporal 
disadvantages. "Hadn't he heard his father say, that, if she had but 
money, she was fit to be a countess? and was money, then, the only 
thing, whereof the having, or the not having, could make her good or 
bad? — money, the only wealth for soul, and mind, and body? Arc 
affections nothing, are truth and honour nothing, religion nothing, good 
sense nothing, health nothing, beauty nothing — unless money gild them 
all? Nonsense!" said Jonathan, indignantly, warmed by his amatory 
eloquence ; " come weal, come wo, Grace and I go down to the grave 
together ; for better, if she can be better — for worse, if she could sin — 
Grace Acton is my wealth, my treasure, and possession; and let man 
do his worst, God himself will bless us!" 

So, all this knit their loves : she knew, and he felt, that he was going 
in the road of nobleness and honour; and the fiery ordeal which he had 
to struggle through, raised that hearty earthly lover more nearly to a 
level with his heavenly-minded mistress. Through misfortune and 
mistrust, and evil rumours all around, in spite of opposition from false 
friends, and the scorn of slanderous foes, he stood by her more constantly, 
perchance more faithfully, than if the course of true-love had been 
smoother: he was her escort morning and evening to and from the 
prison; his strong arm was the dread of babbling fools that spoke a 
word of disrespect against the Actons ; and his brave tongue was now 
making itself heard, in open vindication of.the innocent. 



11^ THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

CHAPTER XL. 

SUSPICIONS. 

Yes — Jonathan Floyd was beginning to speak out boldly certain 
strange suspicions he had entertained of Jennings. It was a courageous, 
a rash, a dangerous thing to do: he did not know but what it might 
have jeoparded his life, say nothing of his livelihood : but Floyd did it. 

Ever since that inquest, contrived to be so quickly and so quietly got 
over, he had noticed Simon's hurried starts, his horrid looks, his altered 
mien in all he did and said, his new nervous ways at nightfall — John 
Page to sleep in Mr. Jennings's chamber, and a rush-light perpetually — 
his shudder whenever he had occasion to call at the housekeeper's room, 
and his evident shrinking from the frequent phrase "Mrs. Quarles's 
murder." 

Then aixain, Jonathan would often lie awake at nisjhts, thinkintr over 
divers matters connected with his own evidence before the coroner, which 
he began to see might be of great importance. Jennings said, he had 
gone out to still the dog by the front door — didn't he ? — " How then, Mr, 
Jennings, did you contrive to push back the top bolt? The Hall chairs 
had not come then, and you are a little fellow, and you know that nobody 
in tlie house could reach, without a lift, that bolt but me. Besides, before 
Sir John came down, the hinges of that door creaked, like a litter o' kit- 
tens screaming, and the lock went so hard for want of use and oil, that I '11 
be sworn your gouty chalkstone fingers could never have turned it : now, 
I lay half awake for two hours, and heard no creak, no key turned ; but 
I tell you what I did hear though, and I wish now I had said it at that 
scanty, hurried inquest ; I heard what I now believe were distant screams 
(but I was so sleepy), and a kind of muffled scuffling ever so long : but 
I fancied it mio;ht be a horse in the stable kickino: among the straw in a 
hunter's loose box. I can guess what it was now — cannot you, Mr. 
Simon? — I say, butler, you must have gone out to quiet Don — who by 
the way can't abear the sight of you — through Mrs. Quarles's room: 
and, for all your threats, I 'm not afeard to tell you what I think. First 
answer me this, Mr. Simon Jennings: — where were you all that night, 
when we were looking for you? — Oh! you choose to forget, do you? 
I can help your memory, Mr. Butler; what do you think of the sliower- 
bath in Mother Quarles's room?" 



GRACE'S ALTERNATIVE. 



119 



As Jonathan, one day at dinner in the servants' hall, took occasion to 
direct these queries to the presiding Simon, the man gave such a liorrid 
start, and exclaimed, "Away, I say!" so strangely, that Jonathan could 
doubt no longer — nor, in fact, any other of the household : Jennings 
gave them all round a vindictive scowl, left the table, hastened to his 
own room, and was seen no more that day. 

Speculation now seemed at an end, it had ripened into probability ; — 
but what evidence was there to support so grave a charge against this 
rigid man? Suspicions are not half enough to go upon — especially 
since Roger Acton seemed to have had the money. Therefore, though 
the folks at Hurstley, Sir John, his guests, and all the house, could not 
but think that Mr. Jennings acted very oddly — still, he had always been 
a strange creature, an unpopular bailiff; nobody understood him. So, 
Floyd, to his own no small danger, stood alone in accusing the man openly. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

GRACE'S ALTERNATIYE. 

Very shortly after that remarkable speech in the servants' hall, Jona- 
than found another reason for believing that Mr. Simon Jennings was 
equal to any imaginable amount of human wickedness. That reason 
will shortly now appear ; but we must first of all dig at its roots some- 
what deeper than Jonathan's mental husbandry could manage. 

If any trait of character were wanting to complete the desperate 
infamy of Jennings — (really I sometimes hope that his grandfather's 
madness had a kind of reawakening in this accursed man) — it was fur- 
nished by a new and shrewd scheme for feeding to the full his lust of 
gold. The bailiff had more than once, as we have hinted, found means 
to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained powef over female 
innocence and honest reputation : similarly he now devised a deep-laid 
plot, nothing short of diabolical. His plot was this : and I choose to 
licrry over such foul treason. Let a touch or two hint its outlines : 
those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves. Simon looked 
at Sir John — young, gay, wealthy ; he coveted his purse, and fancied 
that the surest bait to catch that fish was fair Grace Acton : if he could 



120 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

entrap her for his master (to whom he gave full credit for ticliglitiiig in 
the plan), he counted surely on magnificent rewards. How then to 
entrap her? Thus: — he, representing himself as prosecutor of Roger, 
the accused, held for him, he averred, the keys of life and death : he 
would set this idea (whether true or not little mattered, if it served his 
purpose) before an affectionate daughter, who should have it in her 
power to save her parent, if, and only if, she would yield herself to 
Jennings : and he well knew that, granting she gave herself secretly to 
him first, on such a bribe as her father's liberation, he would have no 
difficulty whatever in selling her second-hand beauty on his own terms 
to his master. It was a foul scheme, and shall not be enlarged upon : but 
(as will appear) thus slightly to allude to it was needful to our tale, as 
well as to the development of character in Mammon's pattern-slave, and 
to the fullness of his due retribution in this world. I may add, that if 
any thing could make the plan more heinous — if any shade than blackest 
can be blacker — this extra turpitude is seen in the true consideration, 
that the promise to Grace of her father's safety would be entirely futile — 
as Jennings knew full well ; the crown was prosecutor, not he : and cir- 
cumstantial evidence alone would be sufficient to condemn. Again, it 
really is nothing but bare justice to remark, with reference to Sir John, 
that the deep-dyed villain reckoned quite without his host; for however 
truly the baronet had oft-timesibeen much less a self-denying Scipio than 
a wanton Alcibiades, still the fine young fellow would have flung Simon 
piecemeal to his hounds, if ever he had breathed so atrocious a tempta- 
tion : the maid was pledged, and Vincent knew it. 

Now, it so happened that one evening at dusk, when Grace as usual 
was obliged to leave the prison, there was no Jonathan in waiting to 
accompany her all the dreary long way home : this was strange, as his 
good-hearted master, privately informed of his noble attachment, never 
refused the man permission, but winked, for the time, at his frequent 
evening absence. Nevertheless, on this occasion, as would happen now 
and then, Floyd could not escape from the dining-room ; probably 
because — Mr. Jennings had secretly gone forth to escort the girl him- 
self. Accordingly, instead of loved Jonathan, sidled up to her the loath- 
some Simon. 

Let me not soil these pages by recording, in however guarded phrase, 
the grossness of this wretch's propositions; it was a long way to Hurst- 
ley, and the reptile never ceased tormenting her every step of it, till the 
village was in sight: twice she ran, and he ran too, keeping up with 



GRACE'S ALTERNATIVE. 121 

lior, and pouring into her ear a father's cruel fate and his own detestable 
alternative. She never once spoke to him, but kept on praying in her own 
pure mind for a just acquittal ; not for one moment would she entertain 
the wicked thought of "doing evil that good might come;" and so, with 
flushed cheek, tingling ears, the mien of an insulted empress, and the 
dauntless resolution of a heroine, she hastened on to Hurstley. 

Look here! by great good fortune comes Jonathan Floyd to meet her. 

"Save me, Jonathan, save me!" and she fainted in his arms. 

Now, truth to say, though Sir John knew it, Simon did not, that Grace 
was Jonathan's beloved and betrothed; and the cause lay simply in this, 
that Jonathan had frankly told his master of it, when he found the dread- 
ful turn things had taken with poor Roger; but as to Simon, no mortal 
in the neighbourhood ever communicated with him, further than as 
urged by fell necessity. Of course, the lovers' meetings were as private 
as all such matters generally are ; and Sarah's aid managed them admi- 
rably. Therefore it now came to pass that Simon and Jonathan looked 
on each other in mutual astonishment, and needs must wait until Grace 
Acton could explain the " save me." Not but that Jennings seemed much 
as if he wished to run away ; but he did not know how to manage it. 

"Dear Jonathan," she whispered feebly, "save me from Simon Jen- 
nings." 

In an instant, Jonathan's grasp was tightly involved in the bailiff's 
stiff white neckcloth. And Grace, with much maidenly reserve, told 
her lover all she dared to utter of that base bartering for her father's life. 

"Come straight along with me, you villain, straight to the master!" 
And the sturdy Jonathan, administering all the remainder of the way (a 
quarter of a mile of avenue made part of it) innumerable kickings and 
cuflSngs, hauled the half-mummied bailiff into the servants' hall. 

" Now then, straight before the master ! John Page, be so good as to 
knock at the dining-room door, and ask master very respectfully if his 
honour will be good enough to suffer me to speak to him." 

11 



122 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

THE DISMISSAL. 

It was after dinner. Sir John and his friends had somehow been less 
jovial than usual; they were absolutely dull enough to be talking poli- 
tics. So, when the boy of many buttons tapped at the door, and meekly 
brought in Jonathan's message, recounting also how he had got Mr. Jen- 
nings in tow for some inexplicable crime, the strangeness of the affair 
was a very welcome incident : both host and guests hailed it an adventure. 

" By all means, let Jonathan come in." 

The trio were just outside; and when the blue and silver footman, 
hauling in by his unrelinquished throat that scared bailiff, and followed 
by the blushing village beauty, stood within the room. Sir John and his 
half-dozen friends greeted the tableau with united acclamations. 

"I say, Pypp, that's a devilish fine creature," metaphorically remarked 
the Honorable Lionel Poynter. 

"Yaas." Lord George was a long, sallow, slim young man, with a 
goatish beard, like the Due d'Aumale's ; he affected extreme fashion 
and infinite sangfroid. 

"Well, Jonathan, what is it?" asked the baronet. 

" Why, in one word, my honoured master, this scoundrel here has been 
wickedly insulting my own poor dear Grace, by promising to save her 
father from the gallows if — if — " 

"If what, man? speak out," said Mr. Poynter. 

"You don't mean to say, Jennings, that you are brute enough to be 
seducing that poor man Roger's daughter, just as he's going to be tried 
for his life ?" asked Sir John. 

Simon uttered nothing in reply ; but Grace burst into tears. 

"A fair idea that, 'pon my honour," drawled the chivalrous Pypp, 
proceeding to direct his delicate attentions towards the weeping damsel. 

"Simon Jennings," said Sir John, after pausing in vain for his reply, 
" I have long wished to get rid of you, sir. Silence ! I know you, and 
have been finding out your rascally proceedings these ten days past. 
I have learnt much, more than you may fancy : and now this crowning 
villany [what if he had known of the ulterior designs?] gives me fair 
occasion to say once and for ever, begone !" 



THE DISMISSAL. I03 

Jennings drew himself up with an air of insufferable impudence, and 
quietly answered, 

" John Vincent, I am proud to leave your service. I trust I can afford 
to live without your help." 

There was a general outcry at this speech, and Jonathan collared him 
again ; but the baronet calmly set all straight by saying, 

"Perhaps, sir, you may not be aware that your systematic thievings 
and extortions have amply justified me in detaining your iron chest and 
other valuables, until I find out how you may have come by them." 

This was the coup de grace to Jennings, who looked scared and terri- 
fied: — what! all gone — all, his own beloved hoard, and that dear-bought 
crock of gold? Then Sir John added, after one minute of dignified and 
indignant silence, 

"Begone! — Jonathan put him out; and if you will kick him out of 
the hall-door on your private account, I'll forgive you for it." 

With that, the liveried Antinous raised the little monster by the small 
of the back, drew him struggling from the presence, and lifting him up 
like a football, inflicted one enormous kick that sent him spinning down 
the whole flight of fifteen marble stairs. This exploit accomplished to 
the satisfaction of all parties, Jonathan naturally enough returned to look 
for Grace ; and his master, with a couple of friends who had run to the 
door to witness the catastrophe, returned immediately before him. 

"Lord George Pypp, you will oblige me by leaving the young woman 
alone;" was Sir John's first angry reproof when he perceived the rustic 
beauty radiant with indignation at some mean offence. 

"The worthy baronet wa-ants her for himself," drawled Pypp. 

"Say that again, my lord, and you shall follow Jennings." 

Whilst the noble youth was slowly elaborating a proper answer, Jona- 
than's voice was heard once more : he had long looked very white, kept 
both hands clenched, and seemed as if, saving his master's presence, he 
could, and would have vanquished the whole room of them. 

'Master, have I your honour's permission to speak?" 

"No, Jonathan, I'll speak for you; if, that is to say. Lord George 
will " 

"Paardon me. Sir John Devereux Vincent, your feyllow — and his 
master, are not fit company for Lord George Pypp;" — and he leisurely 
proceeded to withdraw. 

"Stop a minute, Pypp, I've just one remark to make," hurriedly 
exclaimed Mr. Lionel Poynter, "if Sir John will suffer me; Vincent, 



124 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

my good friend, we are wrong — Pypp's wrong, and so am I. First 
then, let me beg pardon of a very pretty girl, for making her look prettier 
by blushes ; next, as the maid really is engaged to you, my fine fellow, 
it is not beneath a gentleman to say, I hope that you '11 forgive me for 
too warmly admiring your taste ; as for George's imputation, Vincent — " 

"I beyg to observe," enunciated the noble scion, "I'm awf, Poynter." 

He gradually drew himself away, and the baronet never saw him more. 

"For shame, Pypp!" shouted after him the warm-hearted SiUphant; 
"I tell you what it is, Vincent, you must let me give a toast: — 'Grace 
and her lover!' here, my man, your master allows you to take a glass 
of wine with us; help your beauty too." 

The toast was drank with high applause : and before Jonathan humbly 
led away his pleased and blushing Grace, he took an opportunity of 
saying, 

" If I may be bold enough to speak, kind gentlemen, I wish to thank 
you : I oughtn't to be long, for I am nothing but your servant ; let it be 
enough to say my heart is full. And I 'm in hopes it wouldn't be very 
wrong in me, kind gentlemen, to propose; — 'My noble master — honour 
and happiness to him!" 

"Bravo ! Jonathan, bravo-o-o-o !" there was a clatter of glasses ; — and 
the humble pair of lovers retreated under cover of the toast. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

SIMON ALONE. 

Jennings gathered himself up, from that Jew-of-Malta tumble down 
the steps, less damaged by the fall than could have been imagined pos- 
sible ; the fact being that his cat-like nature had stood him in good stead 
— he had lighted on his feet; and nothing but a mighty dorsal bruise 
bore witness to the prowess of a Jonathan. 

But, if his body was comparatively sound, the inner man was bruised 
all over: he crept back, and retreated to his room, in as broken and 
despondent a frame of mind, as any could have wished to bless him 
wherewithal. However, he still had one thing left to live for : his hoard 
— that precious hoai:d within his iron box, and then — the crock of gold. 



SIMON ALONE. 125 

He took Sir John's threat about detaining, and so forth, as merely future, 
and calculated on rendering it nugatory, by decamping forthwith, chat- 
tels and all ; but he little expected to find that the idea had already been 
acted upon ! 

On that identical afternoon, when Simon had gone forth to insult Grace 
Acton with his villanous proposals, Sir John, on returning from a ride, 
had commanded his own seal to be placed on all Mr. Jennings's effects, 
and the boxes to be forthwith removed to a place of safety : induced 
thereto by innumerable proofs from every quarter that the bailiff had 
been cheating him on a most liberal scale, and plundering his tenants 
systematically. Therefore, when Jennings hastened to his chamber to 
console himself for all things by looking at his gold, and counting out a 
bag or two — it was gone, gone, irrevocably gone! safely stored away 
for rigid scrutiny in the grated muniment-room of Hurstley. Oh, what 
a howl the caitiff gave, when he saw that his ti'easure had been taken ! 
he was a wild bull in a net; a crocodile caught upon the hooks; a hyena 
at bay. What could he do? which way should he turn ? how help him- 
self, or get his gold again? Unluckily — Oh, confusion, confusion! — his 
account-books were along with all his hoard, those tell-tale legers, 
wherein he had duly noted down, for his own private and triumphant 
glance, the curious difference between his lawful and unlawful gains; 
there, was every overcharge recorded, every matter of extortion sys- 
tematically ranged, that he might take all the tenants in their turn; 
there, were filed the receipts of many honest men, whom the guardians 
and Sir John had long believed to be greatly in arrear; there, was 
recorded at length the catalogue of dues from tradesmen; there, the list 
of bribes for the custom of the Hall. It would amply authorize Sir 
John in appropriating the whole store ; and Jennings thought of this 
with terror. Every thing was now obviously lost, lost! Oh, sickening 
little word, all lost ! all he had ever lived for — all which had made him 
live the life he did — all which made him fear to die. "Fear to die — 
ha! who said that? I will not fear to die; yes, there is one escape left, 
I will hazard the blind leap ; this misery shall have an end — this sleep- 
less, haunted, cheated, hated wretch shall live no longer — ha! ha! ha! 
ha! I'll do it! I'll do it!" 

Then did that wretched man strive in vain to kill himself, for his hour 
was not yet come. His first idea was laudanum — that only mean of any 
thing like rest to him for many weeks ; and pouring out all he had, a 
little phial, nearly half a wine-glass full, he quickly drank it off: no 

11* 



126 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

use — no use ; the agitation of his mind was too intense, and the habit of 
a continually increasing dose had made him proof against the poison ; 
it would not even lull him, but seemed to stretch and rack his nerves, 
exciting him to deeds of bloody daring. Should he rush out, like a Malay 
running a muck, with a carving-knife in each hand, and kill right and 
left: — vengeance! vengeance! on Jonathan Floyd, and John Vincent? 
No, no ; for some of them at last would overcome him, think him mad, 
and, O terror! — his doom for life, without the means of death, would be 
solitary confinement. " Stay ! with this knife in my hand — means of 
death — yes, it shall be so." And he hurriedly drew the knife across 
his throat ; no use, nothing done ; his cowardly skin shrank away from 
cutting — he dared not cut again ; a little bloody scratch was all. 

But the heart, the heart — ^that should be easier! And the miscreant, 
not quite a Cato, gave a feeble stab, that made a little puncture. Not yet, 
Simon Jennings ; no, not yet ; you shall not cheat the gallows. " Ha ! 
hanging, hanging! why had I not thought of that before?" 

He mounted on a chair with a gimlet in his hand, and screwed it 
tightly into the wainscotting as hiorh as he could reach : then he took a cord 
from the sacking of his bed, secured it to the gimlet, made a noose, put his 
head in, kicked the chair away — and swung by his wounded neck ; in 
vain, all in vain ; as he struggled in the agonies of self-protecting nature, 
the handle of the gimlet came away, and he fell heavily to the ground. 

"Bless us!" said Sarah to one of the house-maids, as they were 
arranging their curl-papers to go to bed: "what can that noise be in 
Mr. Jennings's room? his tall chest of drawers has fallen, I shouldn't 
wonder: it was always unsafe to my mind. Listen, Jenny, will you?" 

Jenny crept out, and, as laudable females sometimes do, listened at 
Simon's key-hole. 

" Lack-a-daisy, Sail, such a groaning and moaning ; p'raps he 's a- 
dying: put on your cap again, and tell Jonathan to go and see." 

Sarah did as she was bid, and Jonathan did as he was bid ; and there wa.s 
Mr. Jennings on the floor, blue in the face, with a halter round his neck. 

The house was soon informed of the interesting event, and the baililf 
was nursed as tenderly as if he had been a sucking babe ; fomentations, 
applications, hot potations : but he soon came to again, without any hope 
or wish to repeat the dread attempt : he was kept in bed, closely watched, 
and Stephen Cramp, together with his rival. Eager, remained continually 
in alternate attendance : until a day or two recovered him as stron<j as 
ever. I told you, Simon Jennings, that your time was not yet come. 



THE TRIAL. 127 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE TRIAL. 

The trial now came on, and Roger Acton stood arraigned of robbery 
and murder. I must hasten over lengthy legal technicalities, which 
would only serve to swell this volume, without adding one iota to its 
interest or usefulness. Nothing could be easier, nothing more worth 
while, as a matter of mere book-making, than to tear a few pages out of 
some musty record of Criminal Court Practice or other Nevvgate Calen- 
dar-piece of authorship, and wade wearily through the length and breadth 
of indictments, speeches, examinations, and all the other learned clatter 
of six houi's in the judgment-halls of law. If the reader wishes for all 
this, let him pore over those unhealthy-looking books, whose exterior is 
dove-coloured as the kirtle of innocence, but their inwards black as the 
conscience of guilt ; whitened sepulchres, all spotless without ; but within 
them are enshrined the quibbling knavery, the distorted ingenuity, the 
mystifying learnedness, the warped and warping views of truth, the lying, 
slandering, bad-excusing, good-condemning principles and practices of 
those who cater for their custom at the guiltiest felon's cell, and would 
glory in defending Lucifer himself. 

In the case of sheer innocence, indeed, as Roger's was — or in one of 
much doubt and secresy, where the client denies all guilt, and the counsel 
sees reason to believe him — let the advocate manfully battle out his 
cause: but where crime has poured out his confessions in a counsellor's 
ear — is not this man bought by gold to be a partaker and abettor in his 
sins, when he strives with all his might to clear the guilty, and not sel- 
dom throws the hideous charge on innocence ? If the advocate has no 
wish to entrap his own conscience, nor to damage the tissue of his honour, 
let him reject the client criminal who confesses, and only plead for those 
from whom he has had no assurance of their guilt; or, better far, whose 
innocence he heartily believes in. 

Such an advocate was Mr. Grantly, a barrister of talents and experi- 
ence, who, from motives of the purest benevolence, did all that in him 
lay for Roger Acton. In one thing, however, and that of no small 
impoil;, the kindly cautious man of law had contrived to do more harm 
than good : for, after having secretly made every effort, but in vain, to 



128 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

find Ben Burke as a witness — and after having heard that the aforesaid 
Ben was a notorious poacher, and only intimate at Hurstley with Acton 
and his family — he strongly recommended Roger to say nothing about 
the man or his adventure, as the acknowledgment of such an intimacy 
would only damage his cause : all that need appear was, that he found 
the crock in his garden, never mind how he "thought" it got there: 
poachers are not much in the habit of flinging away pots of gold, and 
no jury would believe but that the ill-reputed personage in question was 
an accomplice in the murder, and had shared the spoil with his friend 
Roger Acton. All this was very shrewd, and well meant; but was not 
so wise, for all that, as simple truth would have been: nevertheless, 
Roger acquiesced in it, for a better reason than Mr. Grantly's — namely, 
this : his feelings toward poor Ben had undergone an amiable revulsion, 
and, well aware how the whole neigbourhood were prejudiced against 
him for his freebooting propensities, he feared to get his good rough 
friend into trouble if he mentioned his nocturnal fishing at Pike island ; 
especially when he considered that little red Savings' Bank, which, 
though innocent as to the getting, was questionable as to the rights of 
spending, and that, really, if he involved the professed poacher in this 
mysterious affair, he might put his liberty or life into very serious 
jeopardy. On this account, then, which Grace could not entirely find 
fault with (though she liked nothing that savoured of concealment), 
Roger Acton agreed to abide by Mr. Grantly's advice; and thus he 
never alluded to his connexion with the poacher. 

Enlightened as we are, and intimate with all the hidden secrets of 
the story, we may be astonished to hear that, notwithstanding all Mr. 
Grantly's ingenuity, and all the siftings of cross-questioners, the case 
was clear as light against poor Acton. No alibi, he lived upon the spot. 
No witnesses to character; for Roger's late excesses had wiped away 
all former good report : kind Mr. Evans himself, with tears in his eyes, 
acknowledged sadly that Acton had once been a regular church-goer, a 
frequent communican^: but had fallen off of late, poor fellow! And 
then, in spite of protestations to the contrary, behold ! the corpus delicti — 
that unlucky crock of gold, actually in the man's possession, and the 
fragment of shawl — was not that sufficient ? 

Jonathan Floyd in open court had been base enough to accuse Mr. 
Jennings of the murder. Mr. Jennings indeed! a strict man of high 
character, lately dismissed, after twenty years' service, in the most arbi- 
trary manner by young Sir John, who had taken a great liking to the 



ROGER'S DEFENCE. 129 

Actons. People could guess why, when they looked on Grace: and 
Grace, too, was sufficient reason to account for Jonathan's wicked Sus- 
picions; of course, it was the lover's interest to throw the charge on 
other people. As to Mr. Jennings himself, just recovered from a fit of 
illness, it was astonishing how liberally and indulgently he prayed the 
court to show the prisoner mercy : his white and placid foce looked 
quite benevolently at him — and this respectable person was a murderer, 
eh, Mr. Jonathan? 

So, when the judge summed up, and clearly could neither find nor 
make a loop-hole for the prisoner, the matter seemed accomplished ; all 
knew what the verdict must be — poor Roger Acton had not the shadow 
of a chance. 



CHAPTER X L Y 

ROGER'S DEFENCE. 



Then, while the jury were consulting — they would not leave the box, 
it seemed so clear — Roger broke the death-like silence ; and he said : 

"Judge, I crave your worship's leave to speak: and hearken to me, 
countrymen. Many evil things have I done in my time, both against 
God and my neighbour : I am ashamed, as well I may be, when I think 
on 'em : I have sworn, and drunk, and lied ; I have murmured loudly — 
coveted wickedly — ay, and once I stole. It was a little theft, I lost it on 
the spot, and never stole again : pray God, I never may. Nevertheless, 
countrymen, and sinful though I be in the sight of Him who made us, 
according to man's judgment and man's innoccncy, I had lived among 
you all blameless, until I found that crock of gold. I did find it, coun- 
trymen, as God is my witness, and, therefore, though a sinner, I appeal 
to Him : He knoweth that I found it in the sedge that skirts my garden, 
at the end of my own celery trench. I did wickedly and foolishly to 
hide my find, worse to deny it, and worst of all to spend it in the low 
lewd way I did. But of robbery I am guiltless as you are. And as to 
this black charge of murder, till Simon Jennings spoke the word, I never 
knew it had been done. Folk of Hurstley, friends and neighbours, you 
all know Roger Acton — the old-time honest Roger of these forty years, 
I 



130 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

before the devil made him mad by giving him much gold — did he ever 
maliciously do harm to man or woman, to child or poor dumb brute ? — 
No, countrymen, I am no murderer. That the seemings are against 
me, I wot well; they may excuse your judgment in condemning me to 
death — and I and the good gentleman there who took my part (Heaven 
bless you, sir!) cannot go against the facts: but they speak falsely, and 
I truly; Roger Acton is an innocent man: may God defend the right!" 

"Amen!" earnestly whispered a tremulous female voice, "and God 
will save you, father." 

The court was still as death, except for sobbing; the jury were 
doubting and confounded ; in vain Mr. Jennings, looking at the fore- 
man, shook his head and stroked his chin in an incredulous and knowing 
manner; clearly they must retire, not at all agreed ; and the judge him- 
self, that masqued man in flowing wig and ermine, but still warmed by 
human sympathies, struck a tear from his wrinkled cheek ; and all 
seemed to be involuntarily waiting (for the jury, though unable to 
decide, had not yet left their box), to see whether any sudden miracle 
would happen to save a man whom evidence made so guilty, and yet 
he bore upon his open brow the genuine signature of Innocence. 

"Silence, there, silence! you can't get in; there's no room for'ards!'^ 
But a couple of javelin-men at the door were knocked down right and 
left, and through the dense and suffocating crowd, a black-whiskered 
fellow, elbowing his way against their faces, spite of all obstruction, 
struggled to the front behind the bar. Then, breathless with gigantic 
exertion (it was like a mammoth treading down the cedars), he 
roared out, 

"Judge, swear me, I'm a witness; huzza! it's not too late." 

And the irreverent gentleman tossed a fur cap right up to the skylight. 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE WITNESS. 

Mr. Grantly brightened up at once, Grace looked happily to Heaven, 
and Roger Acton shouted out, 

"Thank God! thank God!— there's Ben Burke!" 

Yes, he had heard miles away of his friend's danger about an old 



THE WITNESS. 



131 



sut,% i uJt.J *. hoi^ey-poi full of gold, and he had made all speed, with 
Tom ^a his in am. to come and bear witness to the innocence of Roger. 
The sensation in cou^'t, as may be well conceived, was thrilling ; but a 
vociferous crier, and the deep anxiety to hear this sturdy witness, soon 
reduced all again to silence. 

Then did they swear Benjamin Burke, who, to the scandal of his 
cause, would insist upon stating his profession to be "poacher;" and 
at first, poor simple fellow, seemed to have a notion that a sworn wit- 
ness meant one who swore continually ; but he was soon convinced 
otherwise, and his whole demeanour gradually became as polite and 
deferent as his coarse nature would allow. And Ben told his adventure 
on Pike island, as we have heard him tell it, pretty much in the same 
words, for the judge and Mr. Grantly let him take his own courses; 
and then he added (with a characteristic expletive, which we may as 
well omit, seeing it occasioned a cry of "order" in the court), "There, 
if that there white-livered little villain warn't the chap that brought the 
crocks, my name an't Ben Burke." 

"Good Heavens! Mr. Jennings, what's the matter?" said a briefless 
one, starting up : this was Mr. Sharp, a personage on former occasions 
distinguished highly as a thieves' advocate, but now, unfortunately, out 
of work. "Loosen his cravat, some one there; the gentleman is in fits." 

"Oh, Aunt — Aunt Quarles, don't throttle me; I'll tell all — all; let 
go, let go!" and the wretched man slowly recovered, as Ben Burke said, 

"Ay, my lord, ask him yourself, the little wretch can tell you all 
about it." 

"I submit, my lurd," interposed the briefless one, "that this respect- 
able gentleman is taken ill, and that his presence may now be dispensed 
with, as a witness in the cause." 

"No, sir, no;" deliberately answered Jennings; "I must stay: the 
time I find is come ; I have not slept for weeks ; I am exhausted utterly ; 
I have lost my gold ; I am haunted by her ghost ; I can go no where but 
that face follows me — I can do nothing but her fingers clutch my throat. 
It is time to end this misery. In hope to lay her spirit, I would have 
offered up a victim : but — but she will not have him. Mine was the 
hand that — " 

"Pardon me," upstarted Mr. Sharp, "this poor gentleman is a mono- 
maniac ; pray, my lurd, let him be removed while the trial is proceeding." 

"You horse-hair hypocrite, you!" roared Ben, "would you hang the 
innocent, and save the guilty ?" 



J 32 



THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



Would he? would Mr. Philip Sharp? Ay, that he would; and glad 
of such a famous opportunity. What ! would not Newgate rejoice, and 
Horsemonger be glad? Would not his bag be filled with briefs from 
the community of burglars, and his purse be rich in gold subscribed by 
the brotherhood of thieves ? Great at once would be his name among 
the purlieus of iniquity : and every rogue in London would retain but 
Philip Sharp. Would he ? ask him again. 

But Jennings quietly proceeded like a speaking statue. 

" I am not mad, most noble — " [the Bible-read villain was from habit 
quoting Paul] — "my lord, I mean. My hand did the deed : I throttled 
her" (here he gave a scared look over his shoulder): "yes — I did it 
once and again : I took the crock of gold. You may hang me now, 
Aunt Quarles." 

"My lurd, my lurd, this is a most irregular proceeding," urged Mr. 
Sharp; "on the part of the prisoner — I, I crave pardon — on behalf of 
this most respectable and deluded gentleman, Mr. Simon Jennings, I 
contend that no one may criminate himself in this way, without the 
shadow of evidence to support such suicidal testimony. Really, my 
lurd—" 

"Oh, sir, but my father may go free?" earnestly asked Grace. But 
Ben Burke's voice — I had almost written woice — overwhelmed them all : 

"Let me speak, judge, an't it please your honour, and take you notice, 
Master Horsehair. You wan't evvidence, do you, beyond the man's con- 
fession : here, I '11 give it you. Look at this here wice :" and he stretched 
forth his well-known huge and horny hand : 

"When 1 caught that dridful little reptil by the arm, he wriggled like 
a sniggled eel, so I was forced you see, to grasp him something tighter, 
and could feel his little arm-bones crack like any chicken's : now then, 
if his lefl elbow an't black and blue, though it's a month a-gone and 
more, I '11 eat it. Strip him and see." 

No need to struggle with the man, or tear his coat off. Jennings 
appeared only too glad to find that there was other evidence than his 
own foul tongue, and that he might be hung at last without sacking- 
rope or gimlet ; so, he quietly bared his arm, and the elbow looked all 
manner of colours — a mass of old bruises. 



MR. SHARP'S ADVOCACY. I33 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

IIR. SHARP'S ADVOCACY. 

The whole court trembled with excitement : it was deep, still silence ; 
and the judge said, 

" Prisoner at the bar, there is now no evidence against you : gentle- 
men of the jury, of course you will acquit him." 

The foreman : " All agreed, my lord, not guilty." 

"Roger Acton," said the judge, "to God alone you owe this marvel, 
lous, almost miraculous, interposition : you have had many wrongs inno- 
cently to endure, and I trust that the right feelings of society will requite 
you for them in this world, as, if you serve Him, God will in the next. 
You are honourably acquitted, and may leave this bar." 

In vain the crier shouted, in vain the javelin-men helped the crier, the 
court was in a tumult of joy ;■ Grace sprang to her father's neck, and 
Sir John Vincent, who had been in attendance sitting near the judge all 
the trial through, came down to him, and shook his hand warmly. 

Roger's eyes ran over, and he could only utter, 

" Thank God ! thank God ! He does better for me than I deserved." 
But the court was hushed at last : the jury resworn ; certain legal forms 
and technicalities speedily attended to, as counts of indictment, and so 
forth : and the judge then quietly said, 

" Simon Jennings, stand at tliat bar." 

He stood there like an image. • 

"My lurd, Ldaim to be prisoner's counsel." 

" Mr. Sharp — the prisoner shall have proper assistance by all means ; 
but I do not see how it will help your case, if you cannot get your client 
to plead not guilty." 

While Mr. Philip Sharp converses earnestly with the criminal in 
confidential whispers, I will entertain the sagacious reader with a few 
admirable lines I have just cut out of a newspaper : they are headed 

"suppression of truth and exclusion of evidence. 

"Lawyers abhor any short cut to the truth. The pursuit is the thing 
for their pleasure and profit, and all their rules are framed for making 
the most of it. 

12 



134 



THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



"Crime is to them precisely wliat the fox is to the sportsman: and 
the object is not to pounce on it, and capture it at once, but to have a 
good run for it, and to exhibit skill and address in the chase. Whether 
the culprit or the fox escape or not, is a matter of indifference, the run 
beins the main thini^. 

"The punishment of crime is as foreign to the object of lawyei-s, as 
the extirpation of the fox is to that of sportsmen. The sportsman, because 
he hunts the fox, sees in the summary destruction of the fox by the hand 
of a clown, an offence foul, strange, and unnatural, little short of mur- 
der. The lawyer treats crime in the same way : his business is th'e 
chase of it; but, that it may exist for the chase, he lays down rules 
protecting it against surprises and capture by any methods but those of 
the forensic field. 

" One good turn deserves another, and as the lawyer owes his business 
to crime, he naturally makes it his business to favour and spare it as 
much as possible. To seize and destroy it wherever it can be got at, 
seems to him as barbarous as shooting a bird sitting, or a hare in her 
form, does to the sportsman. The phrase, to give laio, for the allowance 
of a start, or any chance of escape, expresses the methods of lawyers in 
the pursuit of crime, and has doubtless been derived from their practice. 

"Confession is the thing most hateful to law, for this stops its sport at 
the outset. It is the surrender of the fox to the hounds. 'We don't 
want your stinking body,' says the lawyer; 'we want the run after the 
scent. Away with you, be off; retract your admission, take the benefit 
of telling a lie, give us employment, and let us take our chance of 
hunting out, in our roundabout ways, the truth, which we will not take 
when it lies before us.' " 

As I perceive that Mr. Sharp has not yet made much impression upon 
the desponding prisoner, suffer me to recommend to your notice another 
sensible leader : the abuse which it would combat calls loudly for amend- 
ment. There is plenty of time to spare, for some preliminaries of trial 
have yet to be arranged, and the judge has just stepped out to get a 
sandwich, and every body stands at ease; moreover, gentle reader, the 
paragraphs following are well worthy of your attention. Let us name 
them, 

"morbid sympathies. 

" We have often thought that the tenderness shown by our law to pre- 
sumed criminals is as injurious as it is inconsistent and excessive. A 



MR. SHARP'S ADVOCACY. " 135 

miserable beggar, a petty rioter, the wretch who steals a loaf to satisfy 
the gnawings of hi.s hunger, is roughly seized, closely examined, and 
severely punished ; meanwhile, the plain common sense of our mobs, if 
not of our magistracy, has pitied the offender, and perhaps acquitted 
him. But let some apparent murderer be caught, almost in the flagrant 
deed of his atrocity ; let him, to the best of all human belief, have killed, 
disembowelled, and dismembered; let him have united the coolness of 
consummate craft to the boldest daring of iniquity, and straightway 
(though the generous crowd may hoot and hunt the wretch with yelling 
execration) he finds in law and lawyers, refuge, defenders, and apologists. 
Tenderly and considerately is he cautioned on no account to criminate 
himself: he is exhorted, even by judges, to withdraw the honest and 
truthful plea of 'guilty,' now the only amends which such a one can 
make to the outraged laws of God and man : he is defended, even to the 
desperate length of malignant accusation of the innocent, by learned men, 
whose aim it is to pervert justice and screen the guilty ! he is lodged and 
tended with more circumstances of outward comfort and consideration 
than he probably has ever experienced in all his life before; and if, 
notwithstanding the ingenuity of his advocates, and the merciful glosses 
of his judge, a simple-minded British jury capitally convict him, and he 
is handed over to the executioner, he still finds pious gentlemen ready to 
weep over him in his cell, and titled dames to send him white camellias, 
to wear upon his heart when he is hanging.* 

"Now what is the necessary consequence of this, but a mighty, a 
fearfully influential premium on crime? And what is its radical cause, 
but the absurd indulgence wherewith our law greets the favoured, because 
the atrocious criminal? Upon what principle of propriety, or of natural 
justice, should a seeming murderer not be — we will not say sternly, 
but even kindly — catechised, and for his very soul's sake counselled to 
confess his guilt? Why should the mora/e of evidence be so thoroughly 
lost sight of, and a malefactor, who is ready to acknowledge crime, or 
unable, when questioned, to conceal it, on no account be listened to, lest 
he may do his precious life irreparable harm? It is not agonized 
repentance, or incidental disclosure, that makes the culprit his own 
executioner, but his crime that has preceded ; it is not the weak, avow- 
ing tongue, but the bold and bloody hand. 

* It has been stated as a fact, that a certain Lady L S , in her last inter- 
view with a young man, condemned to death for the brutal murder of his sweetheart, 
presented him with a white cameUia, as a token of eternal peace, which the gallant 
gentleman actually wore at the gallows in his button-hole. 



136 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

" We are unwilling to allude specifically to the name of any recent 
malefactor in connexion with these plain remarks; for, in the absence 
alike of hindered voluntary confession and of incomplete legal evidence, 
we would not prejudge, that is, prejudice a case. But we do desire to 
exclaim against any further exhibition of that morbid tenderness where- 
with all persons are sure to be treated, if only they are accused of 
enormities more than usually disgu|ting ; and we specially protest 
against that foolish, however ancient, rule in our criminal law, which 
discourages and rejects the slenderest approach to a confession, while it 
has sacrificed many an innocent victim to the uncertainty of evidence, 
supported by nothing more safe than outward circumstantials." 

At length, and after much gesticulation and protestation, Mr. Sharp 
has succeeded ; he had apparently innoculated the miserable man with 
hopes; for the miscreant now said firmly, "I plead not guilty." 

The briefless one looked happy — nay, triumphant: Jennings was a 
wealthy man, all knew ; and, any how, he should bag a bouncing fee. 
How far such money was likely to do him any good, he never stopped to 
ask. " Money is money," said Philip Sharp and the Emperor Vespasian. 

We need not trouble ourselves to print Mr. Sharp's very flashy, flip, 
pant speech. Suffice it to say, that, not content with asserting vehemently 
on his conscience as a Christian, on his honour as a man, that Simon 
Jennings was an innocent, maligned, persecuted individual ; labouring, 
perhaps, under mono-mania, but pure and gentle as the babe new-born — 
not satisfied with traducing honest Ben Burke as a most suspicious wit- 
ness, probably a murderer — ay, the murderer himself, a mere riotous 
ruffian [Ben here chucked his cap at him, and thereby countenanced 
the charge], a mere scoundrel, not to say scamp, whom no one should 
believe upon his oath ; he again, with all the semblance of sincerity, 
accused, however vainly, Roger Acton : and lastly, to the disgust and 
astonishment of the whole court, added, with all acted appearances of 
fervent zeal for justice, "And I charge, his pious daughter, too, that far 
too pretty piece of goods, Grace Acton, with being accessory to this 
atrocious crime after the fact!" 

There Avas a storm of shames and hisses; but the judge allayed it, 
quietly saying, 

" Mr. Sharp, be so good as to confine your attention to your client ; 
he appears to be quite worthy of you." 

Then Mr. Sharp, like the firm just man immortalized by Flaccus, 



MR. SHARP'S ADVOCACY. I37 

stood stout against the visage of the judge, sneered at the wrath of citi- 
zens commanding things unjust, turned to Ben Burke minaciously, calling 
him '■'•Dux inquieii turhidus Adrm'" [as Burke had heard this quotation, 
he thought it was about the " ducks " he had been decoying], and alto- 
gether seemed not about to be put down, though the huge globe crack 
about his ears. After this, he calmly worded on, seeming to regard the 
judge's stinging observation with the same sort of indifference as the 
lion would a dew-drop on his mane ; and having poured out all manner 
of voluminous bombast, he gradually ran down, and came to a conclu- 
sion ; then, jumping up refreshed, like the bounding of a tennis-ball, 
he proceeded to call witnesses; and, judging from what happened at the 
inquest, as well as because he wished to overwhelm a suspected and sus- 
pecting witness, he pounced, somewhat infelicitously, on Jonathan Floyd. 

" So, my fine young fellow, you are a footman, eh, at Hurstley ?" 

"Yes, sir, an' it please you — or rather, an' it please my master." 

" You remember what happened on the night of the late Mrs. Quarles's 
decease ?" 

" Oh, many things happened ; Mr. Jennings was lost, he wasn't to be 
found, he was hid somewhere, nobody saw him till next morning." 

"Stop, sirrah! not quite so quick, if you please; you are on your 
oath, be careful what you say. I have it in evidence, sirrah, before the 
coroner;" and he looked triumphantly about him at this clencher to all 
Jonathan's testimony; "that you saw him yourself that night speaking 
to the dog; what do you mean by swearing that nobody saw him till 
next morning?" 

"Well, mister, I mean this ; whether or no poor old Mrs. Quarles saw 
her affectionate nephew that night before the clock struck twelve, there 's 
none alive to tell ; but no one else did — for Sarah and I sat up for him 
till past midnight. He was hidden away somewhei'e, snug enough; and 
as I verily believe, in the poor old 'ooman's own — " 

"Silence, silence! sir, I say; we want none of your impertinent 
guesses here, if you please : to the point, sirrah, to the point ; you swore 
before the coroner, that you had seen Mr. Jennings, in his courage and 
his kindness, quieting the dog that very night, and now — " 

"Oh," interrupted Jonathan in his turn, "for the matter of that, wheii 
I saw him with the dog, it was hard upon five in the morning. And 
here, gentlemen," added Floyd, with a promiscuous and comprehensive 
bow all round, " if I may speak my mind about the business — " 

"Go down, sir!" said Mr. Sharp, who began to be afraid of truths. 

12* 



138 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

"Pardon me, this may be of importance," remarked Roger Acton's 
friend ; " say vvliat you have to say, young man." 

"Well, then, gentlemen and my lord, I mean to say thus much 
Jennings there, the prisoner (and I 'm glad to see him standing at the 
bar), swore at the inquest that he went to quiet Don, going round through 
tlie front door ; now, none could get through that door without my hear, 
ing of liim ; and certainly a little puny Simon like him could never do 
so without I came to help him ; for the lock was stiff with rust, and the 
bolt out of his reach." 

"Stop, young man; my respected client, Mr. Jennings, got upon a 
chair." 

"Indeed, sir? then he must ha' created the chair for that special pur- 
pose : there wasn't one in the hall then ; no, nor for two days after, 
when they came down bran-new from Dowbiggins in London, with the 
rest o' the added furnitur' just before my honoured master." 

This was conclusive, certainly ; and Floyd proceeded. 

"Now, gentlemen and my lord, if Jennings did not go that way, nor 
the kitclien-way neither — for he always was too proud for scullery-door 
and kitchen — and if he did not give himself the trouble to unfasten the 
dining-room or study windows, or to unscrew the iron bars of his own 
pantry, none of which is likely, gentlemen — ^there was but one other way 
out, and that way was through Bridget Quarles's own room. Now — " 

" Ah — that room, that bed, that corpse, that crock ! — It is no use, no 
use," the wretched miscreant added slowly, after his first hurried excla- 
mations ; " I did the deed, I did it ! guilty, guilty." And, notwithstanding 
all Mr. Sharp's benevolent interferences, and appeals to judge and jury 
on the score of mono-mania, and shruggings-up of shoulders at his client's 
folly, and virtuous indignation at the evident leaning of the court — the 
murderer detailed what he had done. He spoke quietly and firmly, in 
his 'usually stern and tyrannical style, as if severe upon himself, for 
being what? — a man of blood, a thief, a perjured false accuser? No, 
no; lower in the scale of Mammon's judgment, worse in the estimate of 
him whose god is gold ; he was now a pauper, a mere moneyless forked 
animal ; a beggared, emptied, worthless, penniless creature : therefore 
was he stern against his ill-starred soul, and took vengeance on himself 
for being poor. 

It was a consistent feeling, and common with the mercantile of this 
world ; to whom the accidents of fortune are every thing, and the 
qualities of mind nothing ; whose affections ebb and flow towards friends, 



MR. SHARP'S ADVOCACY. I39 

relations — yea, thejr own flesh and blood, with the varying tide of wealth : 
whom a luckless speculation in cotton makes an enemy, and gambling 
gains in corn restore a friend ; men who fall down mentally before the 
golden calf, and offer up their souls to Nebuchadnezzar's idol : men who 
never saw harm nor shame in the craftiest usurer or meanest pimp, pro- 
vided he has thousands in the three per cents. ; and whose indulgent 
notions of iniquity reach their clima.x in the phrase — the man is poor. 

So then, with unhallowed self-revenge, Simon rigidly detailed hi.s 
crimes : he led the whole court step by step, as I have led the reader, 
through the length and breadth of that terrible night : of the facts he 
concealed nothing, and the crowded hall of judgment shuddei'ed as one 
man, when he came to his awful disclosure, hitherto unsuspected, 
unimagined, of that second strangulation : as to feelings, he might as 
well have been a galvanized mummy, an automaton lay-figure enunci- 
ating all with bellows and clapper, for any sense he seemed to have of 
shame, or fear, or pity ; he admitted his lie about the door, complimented 
Burke on the accuracy of his evidence, and declared Roger Acton not 
merely innocent, but ignorant of the murder. 

This done, without any start or trepidation in his manner as formerly, 
he turned his head over his left shoulder, and said, in a deep whisper, 
heard all over the court, "And now, Aunt Quarles, I am coming; look 
out, woman, I will have my revenge for all your hauntings : again shall 
we wrestle, again shall we battle, again shall I throttle you, again, again !" 

O, most fearful thought! who knoweth but it may be true? that spirits 
of wickedness and enmity may execute each other's punishment, as those 
of righteousness and love minister each other's happiness! that — damned 
among the damned — the spirit of a Nero may still delight in torturing, 
and that those who in this world were mutual workers of iniquity, may 
find themselves in the next, sworn retributors of wrath? No idle threat 
was that of the demoniac Simon, and possibly with no vain fears did the 
ghost of the murdered speed away. 

When the sensation of horror, which for a minute delayed the court- 
business, and has given us occasion to think that fearful thought, when 
this had gradually subsided, the foreman of the jury, turning to the judge, 
said, 

" My lord, we will not trouble your lordship to sum up ; we are all 
agreed — Guilty." 

One word about Mr. Sharp : he was entirely chagrined ; his fortunes 
were at stake ; he questioned whethfer any one in Newgate would think 



140 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

of him again. To make matters worse, when he whispered for a fee 
to Mr. Jennings (for he did whisper, however contrary to professional 
etiquette), that worthy gentleman replied by a significant sneer, to the 
effect that he had not a penny to give him, and would not if he had : 
whereupon Mr. Sharp began to coincide with the rest of the world in 
regarding so impoverished a murderer as an atrocious criminal ; then, 
turning from his client with contempt, he went to the length of congratu- 
lating Roger on his escape, and actually offered his hand to Ben Burke. 
The poacher's reply was characteristic : " As you means it kindly, 
Master Horsehair, I won't take it for an insult: howsomdever, either 
your hand or mine, I won't say which, is too dirty for shaking. Let 
me do you a good turn, Master: there's a blue-bottle on your wig; I 
think as it's Beelzebub a-whispering in your ear: allow me to drive 
him away." And the poacher dealt him such a cuff that the barrister 
reeled again ; and instantly afterwards took advantage of the cloud of 
hair-powder to leave the court unseen. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

SENTENCE AND DEATH. 

Silence, silence ! shouted the indignant crier, and the episodical cause 
of Burke, r. Sharp, was speedily hushed. 

The eyes of all now concentred on the miserable criminal ; for the 
time, every thing else seemed forgotten. Roger, Grace, and Ben, grouped 
together in the midst of many friends, who had crowded round them to 
congratulate, leaned forward like the rest of that dense hall, as simply 
thralled spectators. Mr. Grantly lifted up a pair of very moistened 
eyes behind his spectacles, and looked earnestly on, with his wig, from 
agitation, wriggled tails in front. The judge (it was good old Baron 
Parker) put on the black cap to pronounce sentence. There was a pause. 

But we have forgotten Simon Jennings — what was he about? did that 
'" cynosure of neighbouring eyes " appear alarmed at his position, anxious 
at his fate, or even attentive to what was going on? No: he not only 
appeared, but was, the most unconcerned individual in the whole court: 
he even tried to elude utter vacancy of thought by amusing himself 



SENTENCE AND DEATH. 141 

with external things about him : and, on Wordsworth's principle of 
inducing sleep by counting . 

" A flock of sheep, that leisurely pass by, 
One after one," 

he was trying to reckon, for pleasant peace of mind's sake, how many 
folks were looking at him. Only see — he is turning his white stareful 
face in every direction, and his lips are going a thousand and forty-one, 
a thousand and forty -two, a thousand and forty-three ; he will not hurry 
it over, by leaving out the "thousand:" alas! this holiday of idiotic 
occupation is all the respite now his soul can know. 

And the judge broke that awful silence, saying, 

" Prisoner at tlie bar, you are convicted on your own confession, as 
well as upon other evidence, of crimes too horrible to speak of. The 
deliberate repetition of that fearful murder, classes you among the worst 
of wretches whom it has been my duty to condemn : and when to this is 
added your perjured accusation of an innocent man, whom nothing but 
a miracle has rescued, your guilt becomes appalling — too hideous for 
human contemplation. Miserable man, prepare for death, and after that 
the judgment; yet, even for you, if you repent, there may be pardon; 
it is my privilege to tell even you, that life and hope are never to be sep- 
arated, so long as God is merciful, or man may be contrite. The Sacri- 
fice of Him who died for us all, for you, poor fellow-creature [here the 
good judge wept for a minute like a child] — for you, no less than for me, 
is available even to the chief of sinners. It is my duty and my comfort 
to direct your blood-stained, but immortal soul, eagerly to fly to that 
only refuge from eternal misery. As to this world, your career of 
wickedness is at an end : covetousness has conceived and generated 
murder ; and murder has even over-stept its common bounds, to repeat 
the terrible crime, and then to throw its guilt upon the innocent. Enter- 
tain no hope whatever of a respite ; mercy in your case would be sin. 

"The sentence of the court is, that you, Simon Jennings, be taken 
from that bar to the county jail, and thence on this day fortnight to be 
conveyed to the place of execution within the prison, and there by the 
hands of the common hangman be hanged by the neck " 

At the word "neck," in the slow and solemn enunciation of the judge, 
issued a terrific scream from the mouth of Simon Jennings : was he mad 
after all — mad indeed ? or was he being strangled by some unseen execu- 
tioner? Look at him, convulsively doing battle with an invisible foe ! his 



142 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

eyes start; his face gets bluer and bluer; his hands, fixed like griffin's 
talons, clutch at vacancy — he wrestles — struggles — falls. 

All was now confusion : even the grave judge, who had necessarily 
stopped at that frightful interruption, leaned eagerly over his desk, while 
barristers and serjeants learned in the law crowded round the prisoner : 
"He is dying! air, there — air! a glass of water, some one!" 

About a thimbleful of water, after fifty spill ings, arrived safely in a 
tumbler; but as for air, no one in that court had breathed anything but 
nitrogen for four hours. 

' He was dying : and three several doctors, hoisted over the heads of an 
admiring multitude, rushed to his relief with thirsty lancets : apoplexy — 
oh, of course, apoplexy : and they nodded to each other confidentially. 

Yes, he was dying: they might not move him now: he must die in 
his sins, at that dread season, upon that dread spot. Perjury, robbery, 
and murder — all had fastened on his soul, and were feeding there like 
harpies at a Strophadian feast, or vultures ravening on the liver of Pro- 
metheus. Guilt, vengeance, death had got hold of him, and rent him, as 
wild horses tearing him asunder different ways; he lay there gurgling, 
strangling, gasping, panting: none could help him, none could give him 
ease ; he was going on the dark, dull path in the bottom of that awful val- 
ley, where Death's cold shadow overclouds it like a canopy ; he was 
sinking in that deep black water, that must some day drown us all — 
pray Heaven, with hope to cheer us then, and comfort in the fierce 
extremity! His eye filmed, his lower jaw relaxed, his head dropped 
back — he was dying — dying — dying — 

On a sudden, he rallied ! his blood had rushed back again from head 
to heart, and all the doctors were deceived — again he battled, and fought, 
and wrestled, and flung them from him ; again he howled, and his eyes 
glared lightning — mad? Yes, mad — stark mad! quick — quick — we 
cannot hold him : save yourselves there ! 

But he only broke away from them to stand up free — then he gave one 
scream, leaped high into the air, and fell down dead in the dock, with a 
crimson stream of blood issuing from his mouth. 



RIGHTEOUS MAMMON. I43 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

RIGHTEOUS MAMMON. 

Thus the crock of gold had gained another victim. Is the curse of 
its accumulation still unsatisfied ? Must more misery be born of that 
unhallowed store? Shall the poor man's wrongs, and his little ones' cry 
for bread, and the widows' vain appeal for indulgence in necessity, and 
the debtor's useless hope for time — more time — and the master's misused 
bounty, and the murmuring dependants' ever-extorted dues — must the 
frauds, falsehoods, meannesses, and hardnesses of half a century long, 
concentrate in that small crock — must these plead still for bloody judg- 
nients from on high against all who touch that gold ? 

No! the miasma is dispelled: the curse is gone: the crimes are expi- 
ated. The devil in that jar is dispossessed, and with Simon's last gasp 
has returned unto his own place. The murderer is dead, and has thereby 
laid the ghost of his mate in sin, the murdered victim ; while that victim 
has long ago paid by blood for her many years of mean domestic pilfering. 

And nflw I see a better angel hovering round the crock : it is purified, 
sanctified, accepted. It is become a talent from the Lord, instead of a 
temptation from the devil ; and the same coin, which once has been but 
dull, unrighteous mammon, through justice, thankfulness, and piety, 
shineth as the shekel of the temple. Gratefully, as from God, the right- 
ful owner now may take the gift. 

For, gold is a creature of God, representing many excellencies : the 
sweat of honest Industry distils to gold ; the hot-spring of Genius con- 
geals to gold ; the blessing upon Faithfulness is often showered in gold ; 
and Charities not seldom are guerdoned back with gold. Let no man 
affect to despise what Providence hath set so high in power. None do 
so but the man who has it not, and who knows that he covets it in vain. 
Sour grapes — sour grapes — for he may not touch the vintage. This is 
not the verdict of the wise ; the temptation he may fear, the cares he 
may confess, the misuse he may condemn : yet will he acknowledge that, 
received at God's hand, and spent in his service, there is scarce a crea- 
ture in this nether world of higher name than Money. 

Beauty fadeth ; Health dieth ; Talents — yea, and Graces — go to bloom 
in other spheres — but when Benevolence would bless, and bless for ages, 



[44 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

his blessing is vain, but for money — when Wisdom would teach, and teach 
for ages, the teacher must be fed, and the school fehiilt, and the scholar 
helped upon his way by money — righteous money. There is a righteous 
money as there is unrighteous mammon ; but both have their ministrations 
here limited to earth and time ; the one, a fruit of heaven — the other, a fun- 
gus from below : yet the fruit will bring no blessing, if the Grower be for- 
gotten ; neither shall the fungus yield a poison, if warmed awhile beneath 
the better sun. Like all other gifts, given to us sweet, but spoilt in the 
using, gold may turn to good or ill : Health may kick, like fat Jeshurun in 
his wantonness ; Power may change from beneficence to tyranny ; Learn- 
ing may grow critical in motes until it overlooks the sunbeam ; Love may 
be degraded to an instinct ; Zaccheus may turn Pharisee ; Religion may 
cant into the hypocrite, or dogmatize to theologic hate. Even so it is 
with money : its power of doing good has no other equivalent in this world 
than its power of doing evil : it is like fire — used for hospitable warmth, 
or wide-wasting ravages ; like air — ^the gentle zephyr, or the destroying 
hurricane. Nevertheless, all is for this world — this world only ; a mat- 
ter extraneous to the spirit, always foreign, often-times adversary : let a 
man beware of lading himself with that thick clay. 

I see a cygnet on the broad Pactolus, stemming the waters with its 
downy breast; and anon, it would rise upon the wing, and soar to other 
skies; so, taking down that snow-white sail, it seeks for a moment to rest 
its foot on shore, and thence take flight: alas, poor bird! thou art sink- 
ing in those golden sands, the heavy morsels clog thy flapping wing — in 
vain — in vain thou triest to rise — Pactolus chains thee down. 

Even such is wealth unto the wisest ; wealth at its purest source, expo- 
nent of labour and of mind. But, to the frequent fool, heaped with foulest 
dross — for the cygnet of Pactolus and those golden sands, read — the hip- 
popotamus wallowing in the Niger, and smothered in a bay of mud. 



CHAPTER L. 

THE CROCK A BLESSING. 

There was no will found : it is likely Mrs. Quarles had never made 
one ; she feared death too much, and all that put her in mind of it. So 
the next of kin, the only one to have the crock of gold, was Susan Scott, 



THE CROCK A BLESSING. I45 

a good, honest, hard-working woman, whom Jennings, by many arts, had 

kept away from Hurstley : her husband, a poor thatcher, sadly out of 

work except in ricking time, and crippled in both legs by having fallen 

from a hay-stack : and as to the family, it was already as long a flight of 

steps as would reach to an ordinary first floor, with a prospect (so the 

gossips said) of more in the distance. Susan was a Wesleyan Method. 

ist — many may think, more the pity : but she neither disliked church, 

nor called it steeple-house : only, forasmuch as Hagglesfield was blessed 

with a sporting parson, the chief reminders of whose presence in the 

parish were strifes perpetual about dues and tithes, it is little blame or 

wonder, if the starving sheep went anywhither else for pasturage and 

water. So, then, Susan was a good mother, a kind neighbour, a religious, 

humble-minded Christian : is it not a comfort now to know that the gold 

was poured into her lap, and that she hallowed her good luck by pray- 

ers and praises ? 

1 judge it worth while stepping over to Hagglesfield for a couple of 
minutes, to find out how she used that gold, and made the crock a bless- 
ing. Susan first thought of her debts : so, to every village shop around, 
I fear they were not a few, which had kindly given her ci'edit, some for 
weeks, some for months, and more than one for a year, the happy house- 
wife went to pay in full ; and not this only, but with many thanks, to 
press a little present upon each, for well-timed help in her adversity. 

The next thought was near akin to it : to take out of pawn divers val- 
ued articles, two or three of which had been her mother's ; for Reuben's 
lameness, poor man, kept him much out of work, and the childer came 
so quick, and ate so fast, and wore out such a sight of shoes, that, but for 
an occasional appeal to Mrs. Quarles — it was her one fair feature this — 
they must long ago have been upon the parish : now, however, all the 
ancestral articles were redeemed, and honour no doubt with them. 

Thirdly, Susan went to her minister in best bib and tucker, and hum- 
bly begged leave to give a guinea to the school ; and she hoped his rev- 
erence wouldn't be above accepting a turkey and chine, as a small token 
of her gratitude to him for many consolations : it pleased me much to 
hear that the good man had insisted upon Susan and her husband coming 
to eat it with him the next day at noon. 

Fourthly, Susan prudently set to work, and rigged out the whole fam- 
ily in tidy clothes, with a touch of mourning upon each for poor Aunt 
Bridget, and unhappy brother Simon ; while the fifthly, sixthly, and to 
conclude, were concerned in a world of notable and useful schemes, with 
K 13 



]46 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

a strong resolution to save as much as possible for schooling and getting 
out the children. 

It was wonderful to see how much good was in that gold, how large a 
fund of blessing was hidden in that crock : Reuben Scott gained health; 
the family were fed, clad, taught; Susan grew in happiness at least as 
truly as in girth ; and Hagglesfield beheld the goodness of that store, 
whose curse had startled all Hurstley-cum-Piggesworth. 

But also at Hurstley now are found its consequential blessings. 

We must take another peep at Roger and sweet Grace ; they, and Ben 
too, and Jonathan, and Jonathan's master, may all have cause to thank an 
overruling Providence, for blessing on the score of Bridget's crock. Only 
before I come to that, I wish to be dull a little hereabouts, and moralize : the 
reader may skip it, if he will — but I do not recommend him so to do. 

For, evermore in the government of God, good groweth out of evil : 
and, whether man note the fact or not, Providence, with secret care, doth 
vindicate itself. There is justice done continually, even on this stage of 
trial, though many pine and murmur : substantial retribution, even in 
this poor dislocated world of wrong, not seldom overtakes the sinner, not 
seldom encourages the saint. Encourages ? yea, and punishes : bless- 
ing him with kind severity ; teaching him to know himself a mere bad 
root, if he be not grafted on his God ; proving that the laws which govern 
life are just, and wise, and kind ; showing him that a man's own heart's 
desire, if fulfilled, would probably tend to nothing short of sin, sorrow, 
and calamity ; that many seeming goods are withheld, because they are 
evils in disguise; and many seeming ills allowed, because they are 
masqueraded blessings ; and demonstrating, as in this strange tale, that 
the unrighteous Mammon is a cruel master, a foul tempter, a pestilent 
destroyer of all peace, and a teeming source of both world's misery. 

Listen to the sayings of the Wisest King of men : 

♦' As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more : but the right- 
eous is an everlasting foundation." 

"The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh \n 
his stead." 

" He that trusteth in his riches shall fall : but the righteous shall flour- 
ish as a branch." 

" Better is a little with righteousness, than great revenues without right.' 

" The wicked shall be a ransom for the righteous, and the transgressor 
for the upright." 

" A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children : and 
the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just." 



POPULARITY. 147 

( CHAPTER LI. 

POPULAEITY. 

The storm is lulled : the billows of temptation have ebbed away from 
shore, and the clouds of adversity have flown to other skies. 

" The winter is past ; the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear upon 
the earth ; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the 
turtle is heard in our land : the fig-tree putteth forth his green figs, and 
the blossoms of the vine smell sweetly. Arise, and come away." 

Yesterday's trial, and its unlooked-for issue, have raised Roger Acton 
to the rank of hero. The town's excitement is intense : and the little 
inn, where he and Grace had spent the night in gratitude and prayerful 
praise, is besieged by carriages full of lords and gentlemen, eager to see 
and speak with Roger. 

Humbly and reverently, yet preserving an air of quiet self-possession, 
the labourer received their courteous kindnesses ; and acquitted himself 
of what may well be called the honours of that levee, with a dignity 
native to the true-born Briton, from the time of Caractacus at Rome to 
our own. 

But if Roger was a demi-god, Grace was at the least a goddess ; she 
charmed all hearts with her modest beauty. Back with the shades of 
night, and the prison-funeral of Jennings, fled envy, hatred, malice, and 
all uncharitableness ; the elderly sisterhood of Hurstley, not to be out of 
a fashion set by titled dames, hastened to acknowledge her perfections ; 
Calumny was shamed, and hid his face ; the uncles, aunts, and cousins 
of the hill-top yonder, were glad to hold their tongues, and bite their 
nails in peace : Farmer Floyd and his Mrs. positively came with peace- 
offerings — some sausage-meat, elder-wine, jam, and other dainties, which 
were to them the choicest sweets of life : and as for Jonathan, he never 
felt so proud of Grace in all his life before ; the handsome fellow stood 
at least a couple of inches taller. 

Honest Ben Burke, too, that most important witness — whose coming 
was as Blucher's at Waterloo, and secured the well-earned conquest of 
the day — though it must be confessed that his appearance was something 
of the satyr, still had he been Phoebus Apollo in person, he would 
scarcely have excited sincerer admiration. More than one fair creature 



148 THECROCKOFGOLD. 

sketched his unkempt head, and loudly wished that its owner was a ban- 
dit; more than one bright eye discovered beauty in his open countenance 
— though a little soap and water might have made it more distinguishable. 
Well — well — honest Ben — they looked, and wisely looked, at the frank 
and friendly mind hidden under that rough carcase, and little wonder 
that they loved it. 

Now, to all this stream of hearty English sympathy, the kind and 
proper feeling of young Sir John resolved to give a right direction. His 
fashionable friends were gone, except Silliphant and Poynter, both good 
fellows in the main, and all the better for the absence (among others) of 
that padded old debauchee. Sir Richard Hunt, knight of the order of St. 
Sapphira — that frivolous inanity. Lord George Pypp — and that professed 
gentleman of gallantry, Mr. Harry Mynton. The follies and the vices 
had decamped — had scummed off, so to speak — leaving the more rectified 
spirits behind them, to recover at leisure, as best they might, from all 
that ferment of dissipation. So, then, there was now neither ridicule, nor 
interest, to stand in the way of a young and wealthy heir's well-timed 
schemes of generosity. 

Well-timed they were, and Sir John knew it, though calculation sel- 
dom had a footing in his warm and heedless heart ; but he could not shut 
his eyes to the fact, that the state of feeling among his hereditary labour- 
ers was any thing but pleasant. In truth, owing to the desperate mal- 
practices of Quarles and Jennings, perhaps no property in the kingdom 
hud got so ill a name as Hurstley : discontent reigned paramount ; incen- 
diary fires had more than once occurred ; threatening notices, very ill- 
spelt, and signed by one soi-disant Captain Blood, had been dropped, in 
dead of winter, at the door-sills of the principal farmers ; and all the 
other fruits of long-continued penury, extortion, and mis-government, 
were hanging ripe upon the bough — a foul and fatal harvest. 

Therefore, did the kind young landlord, who had come to live among 
his own peasantry, resolve, not more nobly than wisely, to seize an 
opportunity so good as this, for restoring, by a stroke of generous policy, 
peace and content on his domain. No doubt, the baronet rejoiced, as 
well he might, at the honourable acquittal of innocence, and the myste- 
ries of murder now cleared up ; he made small secret of his satisfaction 
at the doom of Jennings; and, as for Bridget Quarles, by all he could 
learn of her from tenants' wives, and other female dependants, he had 
no mind to wish her back again, or to think her fate ill-timed : neverthe. 
less, he was even more glad of an occasion to vindicate his own good 



ROGERATTHESWAN. I49 

feelings ; and prove to the world that bailiff Simon Jennings was a very- 
opposite character to landlord Sir John Devereux Vincent. 

To carry out his plan, he determined to redress all wrongs within one 
day, and to commence by bringing "honest Roger" in triumph home 
again to Hurstley ; following the suggestion of Baron Parker, to make 
some social compensation for his wrongs. With this view. Sir John took 
counsel of the county-town authorities, and it was agreed unanimously, 
excepting only one dissenting vote — a rich and radical Quaker, one Isaac 
Sneak, grocer, and of the body corporate, who refused to lose one day's 
service of his shopmen, and thereby (I rejoice to add) succeeded in get 
ting rid of fifteen good annual customers — it was agreed, then, and 
arranged that the morrow should be a public holiday. All Sir John's 
own tenantry, as well as Squire Ryle's, and some of other neighbouring 
magnates, were to have a day's wages without work, on the easy condi- 
tions of attending the procession in their smartest trim, and of banqueting 
at Hurstley afterwards. So, then, the town-band was ordered to be in 
attendance next morning by eleven at the Swan, a lot of old election col- 
ours were shaken from their dust and cobwebs, the bell-ringers engaged, 
vasty preparations of ale and beef made at Hurstley Hall — an ox to be 
roasted whole upon the terrace, and a plum-pudding already in the caul- 
dron of two good yards in circumference — and all that every body hoped 
for that night, was a fine May-day to-morrow. 



CHAPTER LII. 

ROGER AT THE SWAN. 

Meanwhile, eventide came on : the crowd of kindly gentle-folks had 
gone their several ways; and Roger Acton found himself (through Sir 
John's largess) at free quarters in the parlour of the Swan, with Grace 
by his side, and many of his mates in toil and station round him. 

"Grace," said her father on a sudden, "Grace — my dear child — come 
hither." She stood in all her loveliness before him. Then he took her 
hand, looked up at her affectionately, and leaned back in the old oak chair. 

" Hear me, mates and neighbours ; to my own girl, Grace, under God, 
I owe my poor soul's welfare. I have nothing, would I had, to give her 

13* 



150 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

in return :" and the old man (he looked ten years older for his six weeks, 
luck, and care, and trouble) — the old man could not get on at all with 
what he had to say — something stuck in his throat — but he recovered, 
and added cheerily, with an abrupt and rustic archness, "I don't know, 
mates, whether after all I can't give the good girl something : I can give 
her — away ! Come hither, Jonathan Floyd ; you are a noble fellow, 
that stood by us in adversity, and are almost worthy of my angel Grace." 
And he joined their hands. 

"Give us thy blessing too, dear father!" 

They kneeled at his feet on the sanded floor, in the midst of their kins- 
folk and acquaintance, and he, stretching forth his hands like a patriarch, 
looked piously up to heaven, and blessed them there. 

"Grace," he added, "and Jonathan my son, I need not part with you 
— I could not. I have heard great tidings. To-morrow you shall know 
how kind and good Sir John is : God bless him ! and send poor Eng- 
land's children of the soil many masters like him. 

"And now, mates, one last word from Roger Acton; a short word, 
and a simple, that you may not forget it. My sin was love of money : 
my punishment, its possession. Mates, remember Him who sent you 
to be labourers, and love the lot He gives you. Be thankful if His 
blessing on your industry keeps you in regular work and fair wages: 
ask no more from God of this world's good. Believe things kindly of 
the gentle-folks, for many sins are heaped upon their heads, whereof 
their hearts are innocent. Never listen to the counsels of a servant, who 
takes away his master's character : for of such are the poor man's worst 
oppressors. Be satisfied with all your lowliness on earth, and keep your 
just ambitions for another world. Flee strong liquors and ill company. 
Nurse no heated hopes, no will-o'-the-wisp bright wishes : rather let your 
warmest hopes be temperately these — health, work, wages: and as for 
wishing, mates, wish any thing you will — sooner than to find a crock 
of gold." 



ROGER'S TRIUMPH. 151 

CHAPTER LIII. 

ROGER'S TRIUMPH. 

The steeples rang out merrily, full chime ; High street was gay with 
streamers; the town-band busily assembling; a host of happy urchins 
from emancipated schools, were shouting in all manner of keys all man- 
ner of gleeful noises : every body seemed a-stir. 

A proud man that day was Roger Acton ; not of his deserts — ^they 
were worse than none, he knew it; not of the procession — no silly child 
was he, to be caught with toy and tinsel ; God wot, he was meek enough 
in self — and as for other pride, he knew from old electioneerings, what 
a humbling thing is triumph. 

But when he saw from the windows of the Swan, those crowds of 
new-made friends trooping up in holiday suits with flags, and wands, 
and corporation badges — when the band for a commencement struck up 
the heart-stirring hymn 'God save the Queen,' — when the horsemen, 
and carriages, and gigs, and carts assembled — when the baronet's own 
barouche and four, dashing up to the door, had come from Hurstley Hall 
for him — when Sir John, the happiest of the happy, alighting with his 
two friends, had displaced them for Roger and Grace, while the kind 
gentlemen took horse, and headed the procession — when Ben Burke (as 
clean as soap could get him, and bedecked in new attire) was ordered to 
sit beside Jonathan in the rumble-tumble — when the cheering, and the 
merry -going bells, and the quick-march 'British Grenadiers,' rapidly 
succeeding the national anthem — when all these tokens of a generous 
sympathy smote upon his ears, his eyes, his heart, Roger Acton wept 
aloud — he wept for very pride and joy : proud and glad was he that day 
of his country, of his countrymen, of his generous landlord, of his gentle 
Grace, of his vindicated innocence, and of God, "who had done so great 
things for him." 

So, the happy cavalcade moved on, horse and foot, and carts and 
carriages, through the noisy town, along the thronged high road, down the 
quiet lanes that lead to Hurstley ; welcomed at every cottage-door with 
boisterous huzzas, and adding to its ranks at every corner. And so they 
reached the village, where the band struck up, 

" See the conquering hero comes, 
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!" 



152 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

Is not tliis returning like a nabob, Roger? Hath not God blest thee 
tlirough the crock of gold at last, in spite of sin ? 

There, at the entrance by the mile-stone, stood Mary and the babes, 
with a knot of friends around her, bright with happiness; on the top of 
it was perched son Tom, waving the blue and silver flag of Hurstley, 
and acting as fugleman to a crowd of uproarious cheerers ; and beside 
it, on the bank, sat Sarah Stack, overcome with joy, and sobbing like a 
gladsome Niobe. 

And the village bells went merrily ; every cottage was gay with spring 
garlands, and each familiar face lit up with looks of kindness; Hark! 
hark! — "Welcome, honest Roger, welcome home again!" they shout: 
and the patereroes on the lawn thunder a salute; "welcome, honest 
neighbour;" — and up went, at bright noon, Tom Stableboy's dozen of 
rockets wrapped around with streamers of glazed calico — "welcome, 
welcome!" 

Good Mr. Evans stood at the door of fine old Hurstley, in wig, and 
band, and cassock, to receive back his wandering sheep that had been 
lost : and the school-children, ranged upon the steps, thrillingly sang 
out the beautiful chant, "I will arise, and go to my Father, and will 
say unto Him, 'Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, 
and am no more worthy to be called thy son!'" 

Every head was uncovered, and every cheek ran down with tears. 



CHAPTER LIV. 

Sm JOHN'S PAETINQ SPEECH. 

Then Sir John, standing up in the barouche at his own hall-door, 
addressed the assembled multitude : 

"Friends, we are gathered here to-day, in the cause of common 
justice and brotherly kindness. There are many of you whom I see 
around me, my tenants, neighbours, or dependants, who have met with 
wrongs and extortions heretofore, but you all shall be righted in your 
turn ; trust me, men, the old hard times are gone, your landlord lives 
among you, and his first care shall be to redress your many grievances, 
paying back the gains of your oppressor." 



SIR JOHN'S PARTING SPEECH. 153 

"God bless you, sir, God bless you!" was the echo from many a 
gladdened heart. 

"But before I hear your several claims in turn, which shall be done 
to-morrow, our chief duty this day is to recompense an honest man for 
all that he has innocently suffered. It is five-and-thirty years, as I find 
by my books, on this very first of May, since Roger Acton first began to 
work at Hurstley; till within this now past evil month, he has always 
been the honest steady fellow that you knew him from his youth : what 
say you, men, to having as a bailiff one of yourselves ; a kind and humble 
man, a good man, the best hand in the parish in all the works of your 
vocation — a steady mind, an honest heart — what say ye all to Roger 
Acton?" 

There was a whirlwind of tumultuous applause. 

" Moreover, men, though you all, each according to his measure and 
my means, shall meet with liberal justice for your lesser ills, yet we must 
all remember that Bailiff Acton here had nearly died a felon's death, 
through that bad man Jennings and the unlucky crock of gold ; in 
addition, extortion has gone greater lengths with him, than with any 
other on the property ; I find that for the last twenty years, Roger Acton 
has regularly paid to that monster of oppression who is now dead, a 
double rent — four guineas instead of forty shillings. I desire, as a good 
master, to make amends for the crimes of my wicked servant; there- 
lore in this bag. Bailiff Acton, is returned to you all the rent you ever 
paid;" [Roger could not speak for tears;] — "and your cottage repaired 
and fitted, with an acre round it, is yours and your children's, rent-free 
for ever." 

"Huzzah, huzzah!" roared Ben from the dickey, in a gush of disin- 
terested joy ; and then, like an experienced toast-master, he marshalled 
in due hip, hip, hip order, the shouts of acclamation that rent the air. 
In an interval of silence. Sir John added, 

" As for you, good-hearted fellow, if you will only mend your speech, 
I'll make you one of my keepers; you shall call yourself licensed 
poacher, if you choose." 

"Blessings on your honour! you've made an honest man o' me." 

" And now, Jonathan Floyd, I have one word to say to you, sir. I 
hear you are to marry our Roger's pretty Grace." Jonathan appeared 
like a sheep in livery. 

"You must quit my service." Jonathan was quite alarmed. "Do 
you suppose, Master Jonathan, that I can house at Hurstley, before a 



154 THE CROCK OF GOLD. 

Lady Vincent comes amongst us to keep the gossips quiet, such a 
charming little wife as that, and all her ruddy children?" 

It was Grace's turn to feel confused, so she "looked like a rose in 
June,'* and blushed all over, as Charles Lamb's Astraea did, down to 
the ankle. 

"Yes, Jonathan, you and I must part, but we part good friends: you 
have been a noble lover : may you make the girl a good and happy 
husband ! Jennings has been robbing me and those about me for years : 
it is impossible to separate specially my rights from his extortions : but 
all, as I have said, shall be satisfied : meanwhile, his hoards are mine. 
I appropriate one half of them for other claimants; the remaining half I 
give to Grace Floyd as dower. Don't be a fool, Jonathan, and blubber ; 
look to your Grace there, she 's fainting — you can set up landlord for 
yourself, do you hear? — for I make yours honestly, as much as Roger 
found in his now lucky Crock of Gold." 

Poor Roger, quite unmanned, could only wave his hat, and — ^the cur- 
tain falls amid thunders of applause. 



END OF THE CROCK OF GOLD. 



THE TWINS; 



A DOMESTIC NOVEL, 



BY 

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, A.M., F. R. S, 



AUTHOR OF 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 



HARTFORD : 
PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON 

1853. 



THE TWINS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PLACE: TIME: CIRCUMSTANCE. 

BtTELEiGH-SiNGLETON is a pleasant little watering-place on the southern 
coast of England, entirely suitable for those who have small incomes 
and good consciences. The latter, to residents especially, are at least 
as indispensable as the former : seeing that, however just the reputation 
of their growing little town for superior cheapness in matters of meal 
and drink, its character in things regarding men and manners is quite as 
undeniable for preeminent dullness. 

Not but that it has its varieties of scene, and more or less of circum- 
stances too : there are, on one flank, the breezy Heights, with flag-staff 
and panorama ; on the other, broad and level water-meadows, skirted by 
the dark-flowing Mullet, running to the sea between its tortuous banks : 
for neighbourhood, Pacton Park is one great attraction — the pretty mar- 
ket-town of Eyemouth another — the everlasting, never-tiring sea a third ; 
and, at high-summer, when the Devonshire lanes are not knee-deep in 
mire, the nevertheless immeasurably filthy,, though picturesque, mud- 
built village of Oxton. 

Then again (and really as I enumerate these multitudinous advantages, 
I begin to relent for having called it dull), you may pick up curious agate 
pebbles on the beach, as well as corallines and scarce sea-weeds, good 
for gumming on front-parlour windows ; you may fish for whitings in 
the bay, and occasionally catch them ; you may wade in huge caout- 
chouc boots among the muddy shallows of the Mullet, and shoot at cor- 
morants and curlews; you may walk to satiety between high-banked 
and rather dirty cross-roads ; and, if you will scramble up the hedge-row, 
may get now and then peeps of undulated country landscape. 

Moreover, you have free liberty to drop in any where to "tiffin" — 
Burleigh being very Indianized, and a guest always welcome ; indeed, 

14 



158 THE TWINS. 

so Indianized is it, so populous in jaundiced cheek and ailing livers, that 
you may openly assert, without fear of being misunderstood (if you wish 
to vary your common phrase of loyalty), that Victoria sits upon the " mus- 
nud " of Great Britain ; you may order curry in the smallest pot-house, 
and still be sure to get the rice well-cooked ; you may call your house- 
maid " ayah," without risk of warning for impertinence ; you may vent 
your wrath against indolent waiters in eloquence of " jaa, soostee ;" and, 
finally, you may go to the library, and besides the advantage of the day- 
before-yesterday's Times, you may behold in bilious presence an affable, 
but authoritative, old gentleman, who introduces himself, " Sir, you see in 
me the hero of Puttymuddyfudgepoor." 

You may even now see such an one, I say, and hear him too, if you 
will but go to Burleigh ; seeing he has by this time over-lived the year 
or so whereof our tale discourses. He has, by dint of service, attained 
to the dignity of General H. E. I. C. S., and — which he was still longer 
coming to — the wisdom of being a communicative creature ; though pos- 
sibly, by a natural reaction, at present he carries anti-secresy a little too 
far, and verges on the gossiping extreme. But, at the time to which we 
must look back to commence this right-instructive story, General Tracy 
was still drinking " Hodgson's Pale" in India, was so taciturn as to be 
considered almost dumb, and had not yet lifted up his yellow visage 
upon Albion's white cliffs, nor taken up head-quarters in his final rest 
of Burleigh-Singleton. 

Nevertheless, with reference to quartering at Burleigh, a certain long- 
neglected wife of his, Mrs. Tracy, had ; and that for the period of at least 
the twenty-one years preceding: how and wherefore I proceed to tell. 

A common case and common fate was that of Mrs. Tracy. She had 
married, both early and hastily, a gallant lieutenant, John George Julian 
Tracy, to wit, the military germ of our future general ; their courtship 
and acquaintance previous to matrimony extended over the not inconsid- 
erable space of three whole weeks — commencing with a country ball ; 
and after marriage, honey-moon inclusive, they lived the life of cooing 
doves for three whole months. 

And now came the furlough's end : Mr. Tracy, in his then habitual 
reserve (a quiet man was he), had concealed its existence altogether: 
and, for aught Jane knew, the hearty invalid was to remain at home 
for ever : but months soon slip away ; and so it came to pass, that on a 
certain next Wednesday he must be on his way back to the Presidency 
of Madras, and — if she will not follow him — he must leave her. 



PLACE: TIME: CIRCUMSTANCE. 159 

However, there was a certain old relative, one Mrs. Green, a childless 
widow — rich, capricious, and infirm — whom Jane Tracy did not wish to 
lose sight of: her money was well worth both watching and waiting for ; 
and the captain, whom a lucky chance had now lifted out of the lieuten- 
ancy, was easily persuaded to forego the pleasure of his wife's company 
till the somewhat indefinite period of her old aunt's death. 

How far sundry discoveries made in the unknown regions of each 
other's temper reconciled him to this retrograding bachelorship, and her 
to her widowhood-bewitched, I will not undertake to say : but I will haz- 
ard the remark, anti-poor-law though it seemeth, that the separation of 
man and wife, however convenient, lucrative, or even mutually pleasant, 
is a dereliction of duty, which always deserves, and generally meets, its 
proper and discriminative punishment. Had the young wife faithfully 
performed her Maker's bidding, and left all other ties unstrung to cleave 
unto her lord ; had she considered a husband's true affections before all 
other wealth, and resolved to share his dangers, to solace his cares, to be 
his blessing through life, and his partner even unto death, rather than 
selfishly to seek her own comfort, and consult her own interest — the tale 
of crime and sadness, which it is my lot to tell, would never have had 
truth for its foundation. 

Ill-matched for happiness though they were, however well-matched as 
to mutual merit, the common man of pleasure and the frivolous woman 
of fashion, still the wisest way to fuse their minds to union, the likeliest 
receipt for moral good and social comfort, would have been this course 
of foreign scenes, of new faces, sprinkled with a seasoning of adventure, 
hardship, danger, in a distant land. Gradually would they have learned 
to bear and forbear; the petty quarrel would have been forgotten in the 
frequent kindness; the rougher edges of temper and opinion would 
insensibly have smoothed away ; new circumstances would have brought 
out better feelings under happier skies ; old acquaintances, false friends 
forgotten, would have neutralized old feuds : and, by long-living together, 
though it were perhaps amid various worries and many cares, they 
might still have come to a good old age with more than average happi- 
ness, and more than the common run of love. Patience in dutiful 
enduring brings a sure reward : and marriage, however irksome a con- 
straint to the foolish and the gay, is still so wise an oi'dinance, that tlie 
most ill-assorted couple imaginable will unconsciously grow happy, if 
they only remain true to one another, and will learn the wisdom always 
to hope and often to forgive. 



160 THE TWINS. 

The Tracys, however, overlooked all this, and mutual friends (those 
invariable foes to all that is generous and unworldly) smiled upon the 
prudence of their temporary separation. The captain was to come 
home again on furlough in five years at furthest, even if the aunt held 
out so long ; and this availed to keep his wife in the rear-guard ; there- 
fore, Mrs. Tracy wiped her eyes, bade adieu to her retreating lord in 
Plymouth Sound, and determined to abide, with other expectant dames 
and Asiatic invalided heroes, at Burleigh-Singleton, until she might go 
to him, or he return to her: for pleasant little Burleigh, besides its con- 
tiguity to arriving Indiamen, was advantageous as being the dwelling- 
place of aforesaid Mrs. Green ; — that wealthy, widowed aunt, devoutly 
wished in heaven : and the considerate old soul had offered her designing 
niece a home with her till Tracy could come back. 

During the first year of absence, ship-letters and India-letters arrived 
duteously in consecutive succession : but somehow or other, the regular 
post, in no long time afterwards, became unfaithful to its trust ; and if 
Mrs. Jane heard quarterly, which at any rate she did through the agent, 
when he remitted her allowance, she consoled herself as to the captain's 
well-being : in due course of things, even this became irregular ; he was 
far up the country, hunting, fighting, surveying, and what not ; and no 
wonder that letters, if written at all, which I rather doubt, got lost. Then 
there came a long period of positive and protracted silence — months of 
it — years of it ; barring that her checks for cash were honoured still at 
Hancock's, though they could tell her nothing of her lord ; so that Mrs. 
Tracy was at length seriously recommended by her friends to become a 
widow ; she tried on the cap, and looked into many mirrors ; but, after 
long inspection, decided upon still remaining a wife, because the weeds 
were so clearly unbecoming. Habit, meanwhile, and that still-existing 
old aunt, who seemed resolved to live to a hundred, kept her as before at 
Burleigh : and, seeing that a few months after the captain's departure 
she had presented the world, not to say her truant lord, with twins, she 
had always found something to do in the way of, what she considered, 
education, and other juvenile amusement : that is to say, when the gay- 
eties of a circle of fifteen miles in radius left her any time to spare in 
such a process. The twins — a brace of boys — were born and bred at 
Burleigh, and had attained severally to twenty years of age, just before 
their father came home again as brevet-major-general. But both they, 
and that arrival, deserve special detail, each in its own chapter. 



THE HEROES. 161 

CHAPTER II. 

THE HEROES. 

Mrs. Tracy's sons were as unlike each other as it is well possible for 
two human beings to be, both in person and character. Julian, whose 
forward and bold spirit gained him from the very cradle every preroga- 
tive of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so he was the 
first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned man, of the 
Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of countenance ; 
with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and ungovernable passions ; 
loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all his overbearing clamour; 
and an embodied personification of those choice essentials to criminal 
happiness — a hard heart and a good digestion. Charles, on the contrary 
(or, as logicians would say, on the contradictory), was fair-haired, blue- 
eyed, of Grecian features ; slim, though well enough for inches, and had 
hitherto (as the commonalty have it) "enjoyed" weak health: 'he was 
gentle and affectionate in heart, pure and religious in mind, studious and 
unobtrusive in habits. It was a wonder to see the strange diversity 
between those own twin-brothers, born within the same hour, and, it is 
superfluous to add, of the same parents ; brought up in all outward things 
alike, and who had shared equally in all that might be called advantage 
or disadvantage, of circumstance or education. 

Certain is it that minds are different at birth, and require as different 
a treatment as Iceland moss from cactuses, or bull-dogs from bull-finches : 
certain is it, too, that Julian, early submitted and resolutely broken in, 
would have made as great a man, as Charles, naturally meek, did make 
a good one ; but for the matter of educating her boys, poor Mrs. Tracy 
had no more notion of the feat, than of squaring the circle, or deter- 
mining the longitude. She kept them both at home, till the peevish aunt 
could suffer Julian's noise no longer: the house was a Pandemonium, 
and the giant grown too big for that castle of Otranto ; so he must go at 
any rate ; and (as no difference in the treatment of different characters 
ever occurred to any body) of course Charles must go along with him. 
Away they went to an expensive school, which Julian's insubordination 
on the instant could not brook — and, accordingly, he ran away ; without 
doubt, Charles must be taken away too. Another school was tried, Julian 
L 14* 



]62 THETWINS. 

Jot expelled this time ; and Charles, in spite of prizes, must, on system, 
be removed with him : so forth, with like wisdom, all through the years 
of adolescence and instruction, those ill-matched brothers were driven 
as a pair. Then again, for fashion's sake, and Aunt Green's whims, 
the circumspective mother, notwithstanding all her inconsistencies, gave 
each of them prettily bound hand-books of devotion ; which the one used 
upon his knees, and the other lit cigars withal ; both extremes having 
exceeded her intention : and she proved similarly overreached when she 
persisted in treating both exactly alike, as to liberal allowances, and lib- 
erty of will; the result being, that one of her sons "foolishly" spent his 
money in a multitude of charitable hobbies ; and that the other was con- 
stantly supplied with means for (the mother was sorry to say it, vulgar) 
dissipation. By consequence, Charles did more good, and Julian more 
evil, than I have time to stop and tell off. 

If any thing in this life must be personal, peculiar, and specific, it 
IS education : we take upon ourselves to speak thus dogmatically, not of 
mere school-teaching only, musa, musce, and so forth ; nor yet of lectures, 
on relative qualities of carbon and nitrogen in vegetables ; no, nor even 
of schemes of theology, or codes of morals ; but we do speak of the 
daily and hourly rcining-in, or letting-out, of discouragement in one 
appetite, and encouragement in another ; of habitual formation of char- 
acters in their diversity ; and of shaping their bear's-cub, or that child- 
angel, the natural human mind, to its destined ends ; that it may turn 
out, for good, according to its several natures, to be either the strong- 
armed, bold-eyed, rough-hewer of God's grand designs, or the delicate- 
fingered polisher of His rarest sculptures. Julian, well-trained, might 
have grown to be a Luther; and many a gentle soul like Charles, has 
turned out a coxcomb and a sensualist. 

The boys were born, as I have said, in the regulation order of things, 
a few months after Captain Tracy sailed away for India some full score 
of years, and more, from this present hour, when we have seen him 
seated as a general in the library at Burleigh ; and, until the last year, 
they had never seen their father — scarcely ever heard of him. 

The incidents of their lives had been few and common-place : it 
would be easy, but wearisome, to specify the orchards and the bee- 
hives which Julian had robbed as a school-boy; the rebellions he had 
headed ; the monkey tricks he had played upon old fish-women ; and 
the cruel havoc he made of cats, rats, and other poor tormented crea- 
tures, who had ministered to his wanton and brutalizing joys. In like 



THEHEROES. K3 

manner, wearily, but easily, might I relate how Charles grew up the 
nurse's darling, though little of his flaunting mother's ; the curly-pated 
young book- worm ; the sympathizing, innoffensive, gentle heart, whose 
effort still it was to countervail his brother's evil : how often, at the risk 
of blows, had he interposed to save some drowning puppy : how often 
paid the bribe for Julian's impunity, when mulcted for some damage 
done in the way of broken windows, upset apple-stalls, and the like : 
how often had he screened his bad twin-brother from the flagellatory 
consequences of sheer idleness, by doing for him all his school-tasks : 
how often striven to guide his insensate conscience to truth, and good, 
and wisdom': how often, and how vainly! 

And when the youths grew up, and their good and evil grew up with 
them, it were possible to tell you a heart-rending tale of Julian's treach- 
ery to more than one poor village beauty ; and many a pleasing trait of 
Charles's pure benevolence, and wise zeal to remedy his brother's mis- 
chiefs. The one went about doing ill, and the other doing good : Julian, 
on account of obligations, more truly than in spite of them, hated Charles ; 
and yet one great aim of all Charles's amiabilities tended continually to 
Julian's good, and he strove to please him, too, while he wished to bless 
him. The one had grown to manhood, full of unrepented sins, and ripe 
for darker crime : the other had attained a like age of what is somewhat 
satirically called discretion, having amassed, with Solon of old, "knowl- 
edge day by day," having lived a life of piety and purity, and blest with 
a cheerful disposition, that teemed with happy thoughts. 

They had, of course, in the progress of human life, been both laid 
upon the bed of sickness, where, with similar contrast, the one lay mut- 
tering discontent, and the other smiling patiently : they had both been in 
dangers by land and by sea, where Julian, though not a little lacking to 
himself at the moment of peril, was still loudly minacious till it came 
too near; while Charles, with all his caution, was more actually courage- 
ous, and in spite of all his gentleness, stood against the worst undaunted : 
they had both, with opposite motives and dissimilar modes of life, passed 
through various vicissitudes of feeling, scene, society; and the influence 
of circumstance on their different characters, heightened or diminished, 
bettered or depraved, by the good or evil principle in each, had produced 
their different and probable results. 

Thus, strangely dissimilar, the twin-brothers together stand before us : 
Julian the strong impersonation of the animal man, as Charles of the 
intellectual; Julian, matter ; Charles, spirit; Julian, the creature of this 



164 



THE TWINS. 



world, tending to a lower and a worse : Charles, though in the world, 
not of the world, and reaching to a higher and a better. 

Mrs. Tracy, the mother of this various progeny, had been somewhat 
of a beauty in her day, albeit much too large and masculine for the taste 
of ordinary mortals; and though now very considerably past forty, the 
vain vast female was still ambitious of compliment, and greedy of admi- 
ration. That Julian should be such a woman's favourite will surprise 
none : she had, she could have, no sympathies with mild and thoughtful 
Charles; but rather dreaded to set her flaunting folly in the light of his 
wise glance, and sought to hide her humbled vanity from his pure and 
keen perceptions. His very presence was a tacit rebuke to her social 
dissipation, and she could not endure the mild radiance of his virtues. 
Fie never fawned and flattered her, as Julian would; but had even 
suffered filial presumption (it could not be affection — O dear, no!) to go 
so far as gently to expostulate at what he fancied wrong ; he never gave 
her reason to contrast, with happy self-complacence, her own soul's state 
with Charles's, however she could with Julian's : and then, too, she would 
indulgently allow her foolish mind — a woman's, though a parent's — to 
admire that tall, black, bandit-looking son, above the slight build, the 
delicate features, and almost feminine elegance of his brother: she 
found Julian alw ys ready to countenance and pamper her gayest 
wishes, and was glad to make him her escort every where — at balls, and 
f6tes, and races, and archery pai'ties ; while as to Charles, he would be 
the stay-at-home, the milk-sop, the learned pundit, the pious prayer- 
monger, any thing but the ladies' man. Yes: it is little wonder that 
Mrs. Tracy's heart clave to Julian, the masculine image of herself; 
while it barely tolerated Charles, who was a rarefied and idealized like- 
ness of the absent and forgotten Tracy. 

But the mother — and there are many silly mothers, almost as many 
as silly men and silly maids — in her admiration of the outward form of 
manliness, overlooked the true strength, and chivalry, and nobleness of 
mind which shone supreme in Charles. How would Julian have act;'d 
in such a case as this? — a sheep had wandered down the cliff"'s face to 
a narrow ledge of rock, whence it could not come back again, for there 
was no room to turn: Julian would have pelted it, and set his bull-ilog 
at it, and rejoiced to have seen the poor animal's frantic leaps tV. wn 
shingly shelf to shelf, till it would be dashed to pieces. But how di^l 
Charles act'/ With the utmost courage, and caution, and presence of 
mind, he crept down, and, at the risk of his life, dragged the bleating, 



THE HEROES. 165 

unreluctant creature up again ; it really seemed as if the ungrateful 
poor dumb brute recognised its humane friend, and suffered him to 
rescue it without a struggle or a motion that might have endangered both. 

Again : a burly costermonger was belabouring his donkey, and the 
wretched beast fell beneath his cudgel : strange to say, Julian and Charles 
were walking together that time ; and the same sight affected each so 
differently, that the one sided with the cruel man, and the other with his 
suffering victim : Charles, in momentary indignation, rushed up to the 
fellow, wrested the cudgel from his hand, and flung it over the cliff; 
while Julian was so base, so cowardly, as to reward such generous 
interference, by holding his weaker brother's arms, and inviting the 
wrathful costermonger to expend the remainder of his phrensy on unlucky 
Charles. Yes, and when at home Mrs. Tracy heard all this, she was 
silly enough, wicked enough, to receive her truly noble son with ridicule, 
and her other one, the child of her disgrace, with approval. 

"It will teach you, Master Charles, not to meddle with common people 
and their donkeys ; and you may thank your brother Julian for giving 
you a lesson how a gentleman should behave." 

Poor Charles ! but poorer Julian, and poorest Mrs. Tracy ! 

It would be easy, if need were, to enumerate multiplied examples 
tending towards the same end — a large, masculine-featured mother's 
foolish preference of the loud, bold, worldly animal, before the meek, 
kind, noble, spiritual. And the results of all these many matters were, 
that now, at twenty years of age, Charles found himself, as it were, alone 
in a strange land, with many common friends indeed abroad, but at home 
no nearer, dearer ties to string his heart's dank lyre withal; neither 
mother nor brother, nor any other Ivind familiar face, to look upon his 
gentleness in love, or to sympathize with his affections, unapprehended, 
unappreciated: so — while Mrs. Tracy was the showy, gay, and vapid 
thing she ever had been, and Julian the same impetuous mother's son 
which his very nurse could say she knew him — Charles grew up a shy 
and silent youth, necessarily reserved, for lack of some one to under- 
stand him ; necessarily chilled, for want of somebody to love him. 



266 THE TWINS. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE AREIV.VL. 

The young men were thus situated as regards both the world and one 
another, and Mrs. Tracy had almost entirely forgotten the fact, that she 
possessed a piece of goods so supererogatory as her husband (a property 
too which her children had never quite realized), when all on a sudden, 
one ordinary morning, the postman's knock brought to her breakfast- 
table at Burleigh-Singleton the-following epistle: 

"British Channel, Thursday, March 11th, 1842. 

" The Sir William Elphinston, E. I. M. 

"Dear Jane : You will be surprised to find that you are to see me so 
soon, I dare say, especially as it is now some years since you will have 
heard from me. The reason is, I have been long in an out-of-the-way 
part of India, where there is little communication with Europe, and so 
you will excuse my not writing. We hope to find ourselves to-night in 
Plymouth roads, where I shall get into a pilot-boat, and so shall see you 
to-morrow. You may, therefore, now expect your affectionate husband, 

"J. G. J. Tracy, General H. E. I. C. S. 

"P. S. 1. — Remember me to our boy, or boys — which is it? 

" P. S. 2. — I bring with me the daughter of a friend in India, who is 
come over for a year or two's polish at a first-rate school. Of course 
you will be glad to receive her as our guest. 

«J. G. J. T." 

This loving letter was the most startling event that had ever attempted 
to unnerve Mrs. Tracy ; and she accordingly managed, for effect and 
propriety's sake, to grow very faint upon the spot, whether for joy, or 
sorrow, or fear of lost liberty, or hope of a restored lord, doth not appear; 
she had so long been satisfied with receiving quarterly pay from the 
India agents, that she forgot it was an evidence of her husband's exist- 
ence ; and, lo ! here he was returning a general, doubtlessly a magnifi- 
cent moustachioed individual, and she was to be Mrs. Genei'al ! so that 
when she came completely to herself, after that feint of a faint, she was 
thinking of nothing but court-plumes, oriental pearls, and her gallant 
Tracy's uniform. 



THE ARRIVAL. 167 

The postscripts also had their influence : Charles, naturally affectionate, 
and willing to love a hitherto unseen father, felt hurt, as well he might, 
at the "boy, or boys;" while Julian, who ridiculed his brother's senti- 
mentality, was already fancying that the "daughter of a friend" might 
be a pleasant addition to the dullness of Burleigh-Singleton. 

Preparations vast were made at once for the general's reception ; from 
attic to kitchen was sounded the tocsin of his coming. Julian was all 
bustle and excitement, to his mother's joy and pride; while Cliarles 
merited her wrath by too much of his habitual and paternal quietude, 
particularly when he withdrew his forces altogether from the loud 
domestic fray, by retreating up-stairs to cogitate and muse, perhaps to 
make a calming prayer or two about all these matters of importance. 
As for Mrs. Tracy herself, she was even now, within the first hour of 
that news, busily engaged in collecting cosmetics, trinkets, blonde lace, 
and other female finery, resolved to trick herself out like Jezebel, and 
win her lord once more ; whilst the pernicious old aunt, who still lived 
on, notwithstanding all those twenty years of patience, as vivacious as 
before, grumbled and scolded so much at this upsetting of her house, 
that there was really some risk of her altering the will at last, and cut- 
ting out Jane Tracy after all. 

And the morrow morning came, as if it were no more than an ordinary 
Friday, and with it came expectancy ; and noon succeeded, and witli it 
spirits alternately elated and depressed ; and evening drew in, with heart- 
sickness and chagrin at hopes or prophecies deferred; and night, and 
next morning, and still the general came not. So, much weeping at that 
vexing disappointment, after so many pains to please, Mrs. Tracy put 
aside her numerous aids and appliances, and lay slatternly a-bed, to nurse 
a head-ache until noon ; and all had well nigh forgotten the probable 
arrival, when, to every body's dismay, a dusty chaise and four suddenly 
rattled up the terrace, and stopped at our identical number seven. 

Then was there scuffling up, and getting down, and making prepara- 
tion in hot haste ; and a stout gentleman with a gamboge face descended 
from the chaise, exploding wrath like a bomb-shell, that so important 
an approach had made such slight appearance of expectancy: it was 
disrespectful to his rank, and he took care to prove he was somebody, 
by blowing up the very innocent post-boys. This accomplished, he gal- 
lantly handed out after him a pretty-looking miss in her teens. Poor 
Mrs. Tracy, en papillotes, looked out at the casement like any one but 
Jezebel attired for bewitching, and could have cried for vexation ; in 



168 THE TWINS. 

fact, she did, and passed it off for feeling. Aunt Green, whom the gen- 
eral at first lovingly saluted as his wife (for the poor man had entirely 
forgotten the uxorial appearance), was all in a pucker for deafness, blind- 
ness, and evident misapprehension of all things in general, though clearly 
pleased, and flattered at her gallant nephew's salutation. Julian, with 
what grace of manner he could muster, was already playing the agree- 
able to that pretty ward, after having, to the general's great surprise, 
introduced himself to him as his son ; while Charles, who had rushed 
into the room, warm-heartedly to fling himself into his father's arms, 
was repelled on the spot for his affection : General Tracy, with a military 
air, excused himself from the embrace, extending a finger to the unknown 
gentleman, with somewhat of offended dignity. 

At last, down came the wife : our general at once pei'ceived himself 
mistaken in the matter of Mrs. Green ; and, coldly bowing to the bediz- 
ened dame, acknowledged her pretensions with a courteous — 

"Mrs. General Tracy, allow me to introduce to you Miss Emily 
Warren, the daughter of a very particular friend of mine : — Miss War- 
ren, Mrs. Tracy." 

For other welcomings, mutual astonishment at each other's fat, some 
little sorrowful talk of the twenty years ago, and some dull paternal jest 
about this dozen feet of sons, made up the chilly meeting: and the 
slender thread of sentimentals, which might possibly survive it, was 
soon snapt by paying post-boys, orders after luggage, and devouring tiffin. 

The only persons who felt any thing at all, were Mrs. Tracy, vexed 
at her dishabille, and mortified at so cool a reception of, what she hoped, 
her still unsullied beauties; and Charles, poor fellow, who ran up to his 
studious retreat, and soothed his grief, as best he might, with philo- 
sophic fancies: it was so cold, so heartless, so unkind a greeting. 
Romantic youth ! how should the father have known him for a son ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE GENERAL AND HIS WARD. 

It is surprising what a change twenty years of a tropical sun can 
make in the human constitution. The captain went forth a good-looking, 
good-tempered man, destitute neither of kind feelings nor masculine 



THE GENERAL AND HIS WARD. igg 

beauty: the general returned bloated, bilious, irascible, entirely selfish, 
and decidedly ill-favoured. Such affections as he ever had seemed to 
have been lefl behind in India — that new world, around which now all 
his associations and remembrances revolved; and 'the reserve (clearly 
reproduced in Charles), the habit of silence whereof we took due notice 
in the spring-tide of his life, had now grown, perhaps from some oppres- 
sive secret, into a settled, moody, continuous taciturnity, which made his 
curious wife more vexed at him than ever ; for, notwithstanding all the 
news he must have had to tell her, the company of John Geoi'ge Julian 
Tracy proved to his long-expectant Jane any thing but cheering or 
instructive. His past life, and present feelings, to say nothing of his 
future prospects, might all be but a blank, for any thing the general 
seemed to care : brandy and tobacco, an easy chair, and an ordnance 
map of India, with Emily beside him to talk about old times, these were 
all for which he lived: and even the female curiosity of a wife, duly 
authorized to ask questions, could extract from him astonishingly little 
of his Indian experiences. As to his wealth, indeed, Mrs. Tracy boldly 
made direct inquiry ; for Julian set her on to beg for a commission, and 
Charles also was anxious for a year or two at college ; but the general 
divulged not much : albeit he vouchsafed to both his sons a liberally 
increased allowance. It was only when his wife, piqued at such reserve, 
pettishly remarked, 

"At any rate, sir, I may be permitted to hope, that Miss Warren's 
friends are kind enough to pay her expenses ;" 

That the veteran, in high dudgeon at any imputation on his Indian 
acquaintances, sternly answered, 

"You need not be apprehensive, madam; Emily Warren is amply 
provided for." Words which sank deep into the prudent mother's mind. 

But we must not too long let dock-leaves hide a violet; it is high time, 
and barely courteous now, to introduce that beautiful exotic, Emily War- 
ren. Her own history, as she will tell it to Charles hereafter, was so 
obscure, that she knew little of it certainly herself, and could barely 
gather probabilities from scattered fragments. At present, we have only 
to survey results in a superficial manner : in their due season, we will 
dig up all the roots. 

No heroine can probably engage our interest or sympathy who pos- 
sesses the infirmity of ugliness : it is not in human nature to admire her, 
and human nature is a thing very much to be consulted. Moreover, no 
one ever yet saw an amiable personage, who was not so far pleasing, 

15 



170 THE TWINS. 

or, in other parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course 
of things; and however hackneyed be the thought, however common, 
place the phrase, it is true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, 
would be the first idea of any rational creature, who caught but a 
glimpse of Emily Warren ; and I should account it little wonder if, 
upon a calmer gaze, that beauty were found to have its deepest, clearest 
fountain in those large dark eyes of her's. 

Aware as I may be, that "large dark eyes" are no novelty in tales 
like this ; and famous for rare originality as my pen (not to say genius) 
would become, if an attempt were herein made to interest the world 
in a pink-eyed heroine, still I prefer plodding on in the well-worn path 
of pleasant beauty ; and so long as Nature's bounty continues to supply 
so well the world we live in with large dark eyes, and other feminine 
perfections, our Emily, at any rate, remains in fashion ; and if she has 
many pretty peers, let us at least not peevishly complain of them. A 
graceful shape is, luckily, almost the common prerogative of female 
youthfulness; a dimpled smile, a cheerful, winning manner, regular 
features, and a mass of luxuriant brown hair — these all heroines have — 
and so has our's. 

But no heroine ever had yet Emily Warren's eyes; not identically 
only, which few can well deny ; but similarly also, which the many 
must be good enough to grant : and very few heroes, indeed, ever saw 
their equal; though, if any hereabouts object, I will not be so cruel or 
unreasonable as to hope they will admit it. At first, full of soft light, 
gentle and alluring, they brighten up to blaze upon you lustrously, and 
fascinate the gazer's dazzled glance : there are depths in them that tell 
of the unfathomable soul, heights in them that speak of the spirit's 
aspirations. It is gentleness and purity, no less than sensibility and 
passion, that look forth in such strange power from those windows of 
the mind : it is not the mere beautiful machine, fair form, and pleasing 
colours, but the heaven-born light of tenderness and truth, streaming 
through the lens, that takes the fond heart captive. Charles, for one, 
could not help looking long and keenly into Emily Warren's eyes; 
they magnetized him, so that he might not turn away from them : 
entranced him, that he would not break their charm, had he been able : 
and then the long tufted eyelashes droop so softly over those blazing 
suns — that I do not in the least wonder at Charles's impolite, perhaps, 
but still natural involuntary stare, and his mute abstracted admiration : 
the poor youth is caught at once, a most willing captive — the moth has 



THE GENERAL AND HIS WARD. 171 

burnt its wings, and flutters still happily around that pleasant warming 
radiance. How his heart yearned for something to love, some being 
worthy of his own most pure aiFections : and lo ! these beauteous eyes, 
true witnesses of this sweet mind, have filled him for ever and a day 
with love at first sight. 

But gentle Charles was not the only conquest: the fiery Julian, too, 
acknowledged her supremacy, bowed his stubborn neck, and yoked him- 
self at once, another and more rugged captive, to the chariot of her 
charms. It was Caliban, as well as Ferdinand, courting fair Miranda. 
In his lower grade, he loved — fiercely, coarsely : and the same passion, 
which filled his brother's heart with happiest aspirations, and pure unsel- 
fish tenderness towards the beauteous stranger, burnt him up as an 
inward and consuming fire : Charles sunned himself in heaven's genial 
beams, while Julian was hot with the lava-current of his own bad heart's 
volcano. 

It will save much trouble, and do away with no little useless mystery, 
to declare, at the outset, which of these opposite twin-brothers our dark- 
eyed Emily preferred. She was only seventeen in years ; but an Indian 
sky had ripened her to full maturity, both of form and feelings : and 
having never had any one whom she cared to think upon, and let her 
heart delight in, till Charles looked first upon her beauty wonderingly, 
it is no marvel if she unconsciously reciprocated his young heart's 
thought — before ever he had breathed it to himself. Julian's admira- 
tion she entirely overlooked ; she never thought him more than civil — 
barely that, perhaps — however he might flatter himself: but her heart 
and eyes were full of his fair contrast, the light seen brighter against 
darkness; Charles all the dearer for a Julian. Intensely did she love 
him, as only tropic blood can love; intently did she gaze on him, when 
any while he could not see her face, as only those dark eyes could gaze : 
and her mind, all too ignorant but greedy of instruction, no less than her 
heart, rich in sympathies and covetous of love, went forth, and fed 
deliciously on the intellectual brow, and delicate flushing cheek of her 
noble-minded Charles. Not all in a day, nor a week, nor a month, did 
Iheir loves thus ripen together. Emily was a simple child of nature, 
who had every thing to learn ; she scarcely knew her Maker's name, 
till Charles instructed her in God's great love : the stars were to her 
only shining studs of gold, and the world one mighty plain, and men 
and women soulless creatures of a day, and the wisdom of creation 
unconsidered, and the book of natural knowledge close sealed up, till 



172 THE TWINS. 

Charles set out before his eager student the mysteries of earth and 
heaven. Oh, those blessed hours of sweet teaching ! when he led her 
quick delighted steps up the many avenues of science to the central 
throne of God! Oh, those happy moments, never to return, when her 
eyes in gentle thankfulness for some new truth laid open to them, flashed 
upon her youthful Mentor, love and intelligence, and pleased admiring 
wonder! Sweet spring-tide of their loves, who scarcely knew they 
loved, yet thought of nothing but each other; who walked hand in hand, 
as brother and sister, in the flowery ways of mutual blessing, mutual 
dependence: alas, alas! how brief a space can love, that guest from 
heaven, dwell on earth unsullied ! 



CHAPTER V. 

JEALOUSY. 

For Julian soon perceived that Charles was no despicable rival. At 
first, self-flattery, and the habitual contempt wherewith he regarded his 
brother, blinded him to Emily's attachment: moreover, in the scenes of 
gayety and the common social circle, she never gave him cause to com- 
plain of undue preferences; readily she leant upon his arm, cheerfully 
accompanied him in morning-visits, noon-day walks, and evening parties ; 
and if pale Charles (in addition to the more regular masters, dancing 
and music, and other pieces of accomplishment) thought proper to bore 
her with his books for sundry hours every day, Julian found no fault 
with tiiat ; — the girl was getting more a woman of the world, and all 
for him : she would like her play-time all the better for such schoolings, 
and him to be the truant at her side. 

But when, from ordinary civilities, the coarse loud lover proceeded to 
particular attentions; when he affected to press her delicate hand, and 
ventured to look what he called love into her eyes, and to breathe silly 
nothings in her ear — he could deceive himself no longer, notwithstand- 
ing all his vanity ; as legibly as looks could write it, he read disgust 
upon her face, and from that day forth she shunned him with undisguised 
abhorrence. Poor innocent maid ! she little knew the man's black mind, 
who thus dared to reach up to the height of her affections ; but she saw 



JEALOUSY. 173 

enough of character in his swart scowling face, and loud assuming man- 
ners, to make her dread his very presence, as a thunder-cloud across 
her summer sky. 

Then did the baffled Julian begin to look around him, and took notice 
of her deepening love of Charles ; nay, even purposely, she seemed now 
to make a difference between them, as if to check presumption and 
encourage merit. And he watched their stolen glances, how tremblingly 
they met each other's gaze ; and he would often-times roughly break in 
upon their studies, to look on their confused disquietude with the pallid 
frowns of envy : he would insult poor Charles before her, in hope to 
humble him in her esteem ; but mild and Christian patience made her 
see him as a martyr : he would even cast rude slights on her whom he 
professed to love, with the view of raising his brother's chastened wrath, 
but was forced to quail and sneak away beneath her quick indignant 
glance, ere her more philosophical lover had time to expostulate with 
the cowardly savage. 

Meanwhile, what were the parents about? The general had given out, 
indeed, that he had brought Emily over for schooling ; but he seemed so 
fond of her (in fact, she was the only thing to prove he wore a heart), 
that he never could resolve upon sending her away from, what she now 
might well call, home. Often, in some strange dialect of Hindostan, did 
they converse together, of old times and distant shores ; none but Emily 
might read him to sleep — none but Emily wake him in the morning with 
a kiss — none but Emily dare approach him in his gouty torments — none 
but Emily had any thing like intimate acquaintance with that moody 
iron-hearted man. 

As to his sons, or the two young men he might presume to be his sons, 
he neither knew them, nor cared to know. Bare civilities, as between 
man and man, constituted all which their intercourse amounted to : what 
were those young fellows, stout or slim, to him ? mere accidents of a 
soldier's gallantries and of an ill-assorted marriage. He neither had, 
nor wished to have, any sympathies with them : Julian might be as bad 
as he pleased, and Charles as good, for any thing the general seemed to 
heed : they could not dive with him into the past, and the sports of Hin- 
dostan : they reminded him, simply, of his wife, for pleasures of Memory ; 
of the grave, for pleasures of Hope : he was older when he looked at them : 
and they seemed to him only living witnesses of his folly as lieutenant, in 
the choice of Mrs. Tracy. I will not take upon myself to say, that he 
had any occasion to congratulate himself on the latter reminiscence. 

15* 



174 THE TWINS. 

So he quickly acquiesced in Julian's wish for a commission, and 
entirely approved of Charles's college schemes. After next September, 
the funds should be forthcoming : not but that he was rich enough, and 
to spare, any month in the year : but he would be vastly richer then, 
from prize-money, or some such luck. It was more prudent to delay 
until September. 

With reference to Emily — no, no — I could see at once that General 
Tracy never had any serious intention to part with Emily ; but she had 
all manner of masters at home, and soon made extraordinary progress. 
As for the matter of his sons falling in love with her, attractive in all 
beauty though she were, he never once had given it a thought: for, first, 
he was too much a man of the world to believe in such ideal trash as 
love: and next, he totally forgot that his "boy, or boys," had human 
feelings. So, when his wife one day gave him a gentle and triumphant 
hint of the state of affairs, it came upon him overwhelmingly, like an 
avalanche : his yellow face turned flake-white, he trembled as he stood, 
and really seemed to take so natural a probability to heart as the most 
serious of evils. 

" My son Julian in love with Emily ! and if not he, at any rate Charles ! 
What the devil, madam, can you mean by this dreadful piece of intelli- 
gence ? — It 's impossible, ma'am ; nonsense ! it can't be true ; it shan't, 
ma'am." 

And the general, having issued his military mandates, wrapped him- 
self in secresy once more ; satisfied that both of those troublesome sons 
were to leave home after the next quarter, and the prize-money at 
Hancock's. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONFIDANTE. 

But Mrs. Tracy had the best reason for believing her intelligence was 
true, and she could see very little cause for regarding it as dreadful. 
True, one son would have been enough for this wealthy Indian heiress — 
but still it was no harm to have two strings to her bow. Julian was her 
favourite, and should have the girl if she could manage it; but if Emily 



THE CONFIDANTE. I75 

Warren would not hear of such a husband, why Charles Tracy may far 
better get her money than any body else. 

That she possessed great wealth was evident: such jewellery, such 
Trinchinopoli chains, such a blaze of diamonds en suite, such a multi- 
tude of armlets, and circlets, and ear-rings, and other oriental finery, 
had never shone on Devonshire before : at the Eyemouth ball, men wor- 
shipped her, radiant in beauty, and gorgeously apparelled. Moreover, 
money overflowed her purse, her work-box, and her jewel-case : Charles's 
village school, and many other well-considered charities, rejoiced in the 
streams of her munificence. The general had given her a banker's 
book of signed blank checks, and she filled up sums at pleasure : such 
unbounded confidence had he in her own prudence and her far-oflT 
father's liberality. The few hints her husband deigned to give, encour- 
aged Mrs. Tracy to conclude, that she would be a catch for either of 
her sons ; and, as for the girl herself, she had clearly been brought up 
to order about a multitude of servants, to command the use of splendid 
equipages, and to spend money with unsparing hand. 

Accordingly, one day when Julian was alone with his mother, their 
conversation ran as follows : 

"Well, Julian dear, and what do you think of Emily Warren?" 

"Think, mother? why — that she's deuced pretty ,.and dresses like an 
empress : but where did the general pick her up. eh ? — who is she ?" 

" Why, as to who she is — I know no more than you ; she is Emilv 
Warren : but as to the great question of what she is, I know that she is 
rolling in riches, and would make one of my boys a very good wife." 

"Oh, as to wife, mother, one isn't going to be fool enough to marry 
for love now-a-days : things are easier managed hereabouts, than that : but 
money makes it quite another thing. So, this pretty minx is rich, is she ?" 

"A great heiress, I assure you, Julian." 

"Bravo, bravo-o! but how to make the girl look sweet upon me, 
mother ? There 's that white-livered fellow, Charles — " 

" Never mind him, boy ; do you suppose he would have the heart to 
make love to such a splendid creature as Miss Warren : fy, Julian, for 
a faint heart : Charles is well enough as a Sabbath-school teacher, but I 
hope he will not bear away the palm of a ladye-love from my fine high- 
spirited Julian." Poor Mrs. Tracy was as flighty and romantic at forty- 
five as she had been at fifteen. 

The fine high-spirited Julian answered not a word, but looked excess- 
ively cross ; for he knew full well that Charles's chance was to his in 
the ratio of a million to nothing. 



176 THE TWINS. 

"What, boy," went on the prudent mother, "still silent! I am afraid 
Emily's good looks have been thrown away upon you, and that your 
heart has not found out how to love her." 

"Love her, mother? Curses! would you drive me mad? I think 
and dream of nothing but that girl : morning, noon, and night, her eyes 
persecute me : go where I will, and do what I will, her image haunts 
me : d n it, mother' don't I love the girl ?" 

[Oh love, love! thou much-slandered monosyllable, how desperately 
do bad men malign thee !] 

"Hush, Julian; pray be more guarded in your language; I am glad 
to see though that your heart is in the right place : suppose now that I 
aid your suit a little ? I dare say I could do a great deal for you, my 
son ; and nothing could be more delightful to your mother than to try 
and make her Julian happy." 

True, Mrs. Tracy ; you were always theatrically given, and played 
the coquette in youth ; so in age the character of go-between befits you 
still: dearly do you love to dabble in, what you are pleased to call, 
"Mwe affaire du coeur." 

"Mother," after a pause, replied her hopeful progeny, "if the girl had 
been only pretty, I shouldn't have asked any body's help ; for marriage 
was never to my liking, and folks may have their will of prouder 
beauties than this Emily, without going to church for it ; but money 
makes it quite another matter : and I may as well have the benefit of 
your assistance in this matter o' money, eh mother? matrimony, you 
know : an heiress and a beauty may be worth the wedding-ring ; 
besides, when my commission comes, I can follow the good example 
that my parents set me, you know ; and, after a three months' honey- 
mooning, can turn bachelor again for twenty years or so, as our gover- 
nor-general did, and so leave wifey at home, till she becomes a Mrs. 
General like you." 

Now, strange to say, this heartless bit of villany was any thing but 
unpleasing to the foolish, flattered heart of Mrs. Tracy ; he was a chip 
of the old block, no better than his father: so she thanked "dear Julian" 
for his confidence, with admiration and emotion ; and looking upwards, 
after the fashion of a Covent Garden martyr, blessed him. 
/ 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE, ETC. 177 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE, ETC. 

" Emily, my dear, take Julian's arm : here, Charles, come and change 
with me ; I should like a walk with you to Oxton, to see how your little 
scholars get on." So spake the intriguing mother. 

"Why, that is just what I was going to do with Charles," said Emily, 
" and if Julian will excuse me " 

" Oh, never mind me. Miss Warren, pray ; come along with me, will 
you, mother?" 

So they paired off in more well-matched couples (for Julian luckily 
took huff), and went their different ways : with those went hatred, envy, 
worldly scheming, and that lowest sort of love that ill deserves the 
name; with these remain all things pure, affectionate, benevolent. 

"Charles, dear," (they were just like brother and sister, innocent and 
loving), "how kind it is of you to take me with you; if you only knew 
how I dreaded Julian!" 

" Why, Emmy ? can he have offended you in any way ?" 

"Oh, Charles, he is so rude, and says such silly things, and — I am 
quite afraid to be alone with him." ' 

"What — what — what does he say to you, Emily?" hurriedly urged 
her half-avowed lover. 

"Oh, don't ask me, Charles — pray drop the subject;" and, as she 
blushed, tears stood in her eyes. 

Charles bit his lip and clenched his fist involuntarily ; but an instant 
word of prayer drove away the,spirit of hatred, and set up love triumph- 
ant in its place. 

"My Emily — oh, what have I said? may I — may I call you my 
Emily? dearest, dearest girl!" escaped his lips, and he trembled at his 
own presumption. It was a presumptuous speech indeed ; but it burst 
J'rom the well of his affections, and he could not help it. 

Her answer was not in words, and yet his heart-strings thrilled beneath 
the melody ; for her eyes shed on him a blaze of love that made him 
almost faint before them. In an instant, they understood, without a word, 
'ihc happy truth, that each one loved the other. 

"Precious, precious Emily!" They were now far away from Bur- 
leigh, in the fields ; and he seized her hand, and covered it with kisses. 
M 



178 THE TWINS. 

What more they said I was not by to hear, and if I had been would 
not have divulged it. There are holy secrets of affection, which those 
who can remember their first love — and first love is the only love worth 
mentioning^may think of for themselves. Well, far better than my 
feeble pencilling can picture, will they fill up this slight sketch. That 
walk to Oxton, that visit to the village school, was full of generous affee- 
tions uni'epressed, the out-pourings of two deep-welled hearts, flowing 
forth in sympathetic ecstasy. The trees, and fields, and cottages were 
bathed in heavenly light, and the lovers, happy in each other's trust, called 
upon the all-seeing God to bless the best affections of His children. 

And what a change these mutual confessions made in both their 
minds! Doubt was gone; they were beloved; oh, richest treasure of- 
joy ! Fear was gone ; they dared declare their love ; oh, purest river 
of all sublunary pleasures ! No longer pale, anxious, thoughtful, worn 
by the corroding cai'e of "Does she — does she love?" — Charles was, 
from that moment, a buoyant, cheerful, exhilarated being — a new char- 
acter; he put on manliness, and fortitude, and somewhat of involuntaiy 
pride ; whilst Emily felt, that enriched by the affections of him whom 
she regarded as her wisest, kindest earthly friend, by the acquisition of 
his love, who had led her heart to higher good than this world at its b-.'st 
can give her, she was elevated and ennobled from the simple Indian 
child, into the loved and honoured Christian woman. They went on 
that important walk to Oxton feeble, divided, unsatisfied in heart : thoy 
returned as two united spirits, one in faith, one in hope, one in love ; 
both heavenly and earthly. 

But the happy hour is past too soon ; and, home again, they mixi:'d 
once more with those conflicting elements of hatred and contention. 

"Emily," asked the general, in a very unusual stretch of curiosity, 
''where have you been to with Charles Tracy? You look flushed, my 
dear; what's the matter?" 

Of course "nothing" was the matter: and the general was answered 
wisely, for love was nothing in his average estimate of men and women. 

"Charles, what can have come to you? I never saw you look so 
happy in my life," was the mother's troublesome inquiry; "why, our 
staid youth positively looks cheerful." 

Charles's walk had refreshed him, taken away his head-ache, put him 
in spirits, and all manner of glib reasons for rejoicing. 

."You were right, Julian," whispered Mrs. Tracy, "and we'll soon 
put the stopper on all tliis sort of thing." 



THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE, ETC. 179 

So, then, the moment our guiltless pair of lovers had severally stolen 
away to their own rooms, there to feast on well-remembered looks, and 
words, and hopes — there to lay before that heavenly Friend, whom both 
had learned to trust, all their present joys, as aforetime all their cares — 
Mrs. Tracy looked significantly at Julian, and thus addressed her ever 
stern-eyed lord : 

" So, general, the old song 's coming true to us, I find, as to other folks, 
who once were young together : 

'"And when with envy Time, transported, seeks to rob us of our joys, 
You'll in your girls again be courted, and I'll go wooing in my boys.'" 

So said or sung the flighty Mrs. Tracy. It was as simple and innocent 
a quotation as could possibly be made ; I suppose most couples, who 
ever heard the stanza, and have grown-up children, have thought upon 
its dear domestic beauty : but it strangely afiected the irascible old 
general. He fumed and frowned, and looked the picture of horror; 
then, with a fierce oath at his wife and sons, he firmly said — 

" Woman, hold your fool's tongue : begone, and send Emily to me 
this minute : stop, Mr. Julian — no — run up for your brother Charles, 
and come you all to me in the study. Instantly, sir ! do as I bid you, 
without a word." 

Julian would gladly have fought it out with his imperative father ; 
but, nevertheless, it was a comfort to have to fetch pale Charles for a 
jobation; so he went at once. And the three young people, two of 
them trembling with affections overstrained, and the third indurated in 
eflfrontery, stood before that stern old man. 

"Emily, child," — and he added something in Hindostanee, "have I 
been kind to you — and do you owe me any love?" 

"Dear, dear sir, how can you ask me that?" said the warm-affectioned 
girl, falling on her knees in tears. 

" Get up, sweet child, and hear me : you see those boys ; as you love 
me, and yourself, and happiness, and honour — dare not to think of either, 
one moment, as your husband." 

Emily fainted ; Charles staggered to assist her, though he well-nigh 
swooned himself; and Julian folded his arms with a resolute air, as 
waiting to hear what next. 

But the general disappointed him : he had said his say : and, as vola- 
tile salts, a lady's maid, and all that sort of reinvigoration, seemed ess^- 
tial to Emily's recovery, he rang the bell forthwith: so the pleasant 
family party broke up without another word. 



180 THE TWINS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MYSTERY. 

Our lovers would not have been praiseworthy, perhaps not human, 
had they not met in secret once and again. True, their regularly con- 
certed studies were forbidden, and they never now might openly walk 
out unaccompanied: but love (who has not found this out?) is both 
daring and ingenious; and notwithstanding all that Emily purposed 
about doing as the general so strangely bade her, they had many happy 
meetings, rich with many happy words : all the happier no doubt for 
their stolen sweetness. 

There was one great and engrossing subject which often had employed 
their curiosity ; who and what was Emily Warren? for the poor girl did 
not know herself. All she could guess, she told Charles, as he zealously 
cross-questioned her from time to time : and the result of his inquiries 
would appear to be as follows : 

Emily's earliest recollections were of great barbaric pomp ; huge 
elephants richly caparisoned, mighty fans of peacock's tails, lines of 
matchlock men, tribes of jewelled servants, a gilded palace, with its 
gardens and fountains: plenty of rare gems to play with, and a splendid 
queenly woman, whom she called by the Hindoo name for mother. The 
general, too, was there among her first associations, as the gallant Captain 
Tracy, with his company of native troops. 

Then an era happened in her life ; a tearful leave-taking with that 
proud princess, who scarcely would part with her for sorrow ; but the 
captain swore it should be so : and an old Scotch-woman, her nurse, she 
could remember, who told her as a child, but whether religiously or not 
she could not tell, "Darling, come to me when you wish to know who 
made you;" and then Mrs. Mackie went and spoke to the princess, and 
soothed her, that she let the child depart peacefully. Most of her gor- 
gcous jewellery dated from that earliest time of inexplicable oriental 
splendour. 

After those infantine seven years, the captain took her with him to his 
station up the country, where she lived she knew not how long, in a strong 
hni-fort, one Puttymuddyfudgepoor, where there was a great deal of 
fighting, and besieging, and storming, and cannonading; but it ceased 



THEM YSTERY 



181 



al last, and the captain, who then soon successively became both 
major and colonel, always kept her in his own quarters, making her his 
little pet ; and, after the fighting was all over, his brother-ofRcers would 
take her out hunting in their howdahs, and she had plenty of palanquin, 
bearers, sepoys, and servants at command ; and, what was more, good 
nurse Mackie was her constant friend and attendant. 

Time wore on, and many little incidents of Indian life occurred, 
which varied every day indeed, but still left nothing consequential 
behind them : there were tiger-hunts, and incursions of Scindian tribes, 
and Pindarree chieftains taken captive, and wounded soldiers brought 
into the hospital ; and often had she and good nurse Mackie tended at 
the sick bed-side. And the colonel had the jungle fever, and would not 
let her go from his sight; so she caught the fever too, and through 
Heaven's mercy was recovered. And the colonel was fonder of her now 
than ever, calling her his darling little child, and was proud to display 
her easly budding beauty to his military friends — pleasant sort of gen- 
tlemen, who gave her pretty presents. 

Then she grew up into womanhood, and saw more than one fine uni- 
form at her feet, but she did not comprehend those kindnesses : and the 
general (he was general now) got into great passions with them, and 
stormed, and swore, and drove them all away. Nurse Mackie grew to 
be old, and sometimes asked her, "Can you keep a secret, child? — no, 
no, 1 dare not trust you yet: wait a wee, wait a wee, my bonnie, 
bonnie bairn." 

And now speedily came the end. The general resolved on returning 
to his own old shores : chiefly, as it seemed, to avoid the troublesome per- 
tinacity of sundry suitors, who sought of him the hand of Emily War- 
ren ; for, by this name she was beginning to be called : in her earliest 
recollection she was Amina ; then at the hill-fort, Emily — Emily — noth- 
ing for years but Emily : and as she grew to womanhood, the general 
bade her sign her name to notes, and leave her card at houses, as Emily 
Warren : why, or by what right, she never thought of asking. But 
nurse Mackie • had hinted she might have had " a better name and 
a truer;" and therefore, she herself had asked the general what this 
hint might mean ; and he was so angry that he discharged nurse Mackie 
at Madras, directly he arrived there to take ship for England. 

Then, just before embarking, poor nurse Mackie came to her secretly, 
and said, "Child, I will trust you with a word; you are not what he 
thinks you." And she cried a great deal, and longed to come to Eng. 

16 



182 THE TWINS. 

land ; but the general would not hear of it ; so he pensioned her off, 
and left her at Madras, giving somebody strict orders not to let her 
follow him. 

Nevertheless, just as they were getting into the boat to cross the surf, 
the affectionate old soul ran out upon the strand, and called to her "Amy 
Stuart! Amy Stuart!" to the general's great amazement as clearly as 
her own ; and she held up a packet in her hand as they were pushing 
off, and shouted after her, "Child — child ! if you would have your rights, 
remember Jeanie Mackie!" 

After that, succeeded the monotony of a long sea voyage. The gen- 
eral at first seemed vexed about Mrs. Mackie, and often wished that he 
had asked her what she meant ; however, his brow soon cleared, for he 
reflected that a discarded servant always tells falsehoods, if only to make 
her master mischief. 

"The voyage over, Charles, with all its cards, quadrilles, doubling the 
cape, crossing the line, and the wearisome routine of sky and sea, the 
quarter-deck and cabin, we found ourselves at length in Plymouth 
Sound ; left the Indiaman to go up the channel ; and I suppose the post- 
chaise may be consigned to your imagination." 



CHAPTER IX. 

HOW TO CLEAR IT UP. 

In all this there was mystery enough for a dozen lovers to have crazed 
their brains about. Emily might be a queen of the East, defrauded of 
hereditary glories, and at any rate deserved such rank, if Charles was 
to be judge; but what was more important, if the general had any rea- 
son at all for his arbitrary mandate prohibiting their love, it was very 
possible that reason was a false one. 

Meantime, Charles had little now to live for, except his dear forbidden 
Emily, any more than she for him. And to peace of mind in both, the 
elucidation of that mystery which hung about her birth, grew more need- 
ful day by day. At last, one summer evening, when they had managed 
a quiet walk upon the sands under the Beacon cliff, Charles said 
abruptly, after some moments of abstraction, "Dearest, I am resolved." 



HOW TO CLEAR IT UP. 183 

"Resolved, Charles! what about?" and she felt quite alarmed; for 
her lover looked so stern, that she could not tell what was going to 
happen next. 

" I '11 clear it up, that I will ; I only wish I had the money." 

"Why, Charles, what in the world are you dreaming about? you 
frighten me, dearest; are you ill? don't look so serious, pray." 

"Yes, Emily, I will : at once too. I 'm off to Madras by next packet; 
or, that is to say, would, if I could get my passage free." 

" My noble Charles, if that were the only objection, I would get you 
all the means ; for the kind — kind general suffers me to have whatever 
sums I choose to ask for. Only, Charles, indeed I cannot spare you; 
do not — do not go away and leave me ; there 's Julian, too — don't leave 
me — and you might never come back, and — and — " all the remainder 
was lost in sobbing. 

" No, my Emmy, we must not use the general's gold in doing what 
he might not wish ; it would be ungenerous. I will try to get somebody 
to lend me what I want — say Mrs. Sainsbury, or the Tamworths. And 
as for leaving you, my love, have no fears for me or for yourself; sit- 
uated as we are, I take it as a duty to go, and make you happier, setting 
you in rights, whatever these may be ; and for the rest, I leave you in 
His holy keeping who can preserve you alike in body, as in soul, from 
all things that would hurt you, and whose mercy will protect me in all 
perils, and bring me back to you in safety. This is my trust, Emmy." 

"Dear Charles, you are always wiser and better than I am: let it be 
so then, my best of friends. Seek out good nurse Mackie, I can give 
you many clues, hear what she has to say ; and may the God of your 
own poor fatherless Emily speed your holy mission ! Yet there is one 
thing, Charles ; ought you not to ask your parents for their leave to go ? 
You are better skilled to judge than I can be, though." 

"Emmy, whom have I to ask? my father? he cares not whither I go 
nor what becomes of me ; I hardly know him, and for twenty years of 
my short life of twenty-one, scarcely believed in his existence; or 
should I ask my mother? alas — love! I wish I could persuade myself 
that she would wish me back again if I were gone ; moreover, how can 
I respect her judgment, or be guided by her counsel, whose constant 
aim has been -to thwart my feeble efforts after truth and wisdom, and to 
pamper all ill growths in my unhappy brother Julian? No, Emily; I 
am a man now, and take my own advice. If a parent forbade me, 
indeed, and reasonably, it would be fit to acquiesce ; but knowing, as I 



184 THE TWINS. 

have sad cause to know, that none but you, my love, will be sorry for 
my absence, as for your sake alone that absence is designed, I need take 
counsel only of us who are here present — your own sweet eyes, myself, 
and God who seeth us." 

"True — most true, dear Charles; I knew that you judged rightly." 
"Moreover, Emmy, secresy is needful for the due fulfilment of my 
purpose." (Charles little thought how congenial to his nature was that 
same secresy.) "None but you must know where I am, or whither I 
am gone. For if there really is any mystery which the general would 
conceal from us, be assured he both could and would frustrate all my 
efforts if he knew of my design. The same ship that carried me out 
would convey an emissary from him, and nurse Mackie never could be 
found by me. I must go then secretly, and, for our peace sake, soon; 
how dear to me that embassy will be, entirely undertaken in my darling 
Emmy's cause!" 

"But — but, Charles, what if Julian, in your absence — " 
"Hark, my own betrothed! while I am near you — and I say it not of 
threat, but as in the sight of One who has privileged me to be your pro- 
tector — you are safe from any serious vexation ; and the moment I am 
gone, fly to my father, tell him openly your fears, and he will scatter 
Julian's insolence to the winds of heaven." 

" Thank you — thank you, wise dear Charles ; you have lifted a load 
from my poor, weak, woman's heart, that had weighed it down too heav- 
ily. I will trust in God more, and dread Julian less. Oh ! how I will 
pray for you when far away." 



CHAPTER X. 

ATJNT GREEN'S LEGACY. 

At last — at last, Mrs. Green fell ill, and, hard upon the over-ripe age 
of eighty-seven, seemed likely to drop into the grave — to the unspeaka- 
ble delight of her expectant relatives. Sooth to say, niece Jane, the 
soured and long-waiting legatee, had now for years been treating the 
poor old woman very scurvily : she had lived too long, and had grown 
to be a burden ; notwithstanding that her ample income still kept on the 



AUNT GREEN'S LEGACY. 185 

house, and enabled the general to nurse his own East India Bonds right 
comfortably. But still the old aunt would not die, and as they sought 
not her, nor her's (quite contrary to St. Paul's disinterestedness), she was 
looked upon in the light of an incumbrance, on her own property and 
in her own house. Mrs. Tracy longed to throw off the yoke of depend- 
ance, and made small secret of the hatred of the fetter: for the old 
woman grew so deaf and blind, that there could be no risk at all, either 
in speaking one's mind, or in thoroughly neglecting her. 

However, now that the harvest of hope appeared so near, the legatee 
renewed her old attentions : Death was a guest so very welcome to the 
house, that it is no wonder that his arrival was hourly expected with 
buoyant cheerfulness, and a something in the mask of kindliness : but I 
suspect that lamb-skin concealed a very wolf. So, Mrs. Tracy ten- 
derly inquired of the doctor, and the doctor shook his head ; and other 
doctors came to help, and shook their heads together. The patient still 
grew worse — O, brightening prospect ! — though, now and then, a cordial 
draught seemed to revive her so alarmingly, that Mrs. Tracy affection- 
ately urging that the stimulants would be too exciting for the poor dear 
sufferer's nerves, induced Dr. Graves to discontinue them. Then those 
fearful scintillations in her lamp of life grew fortunately duller, and the 
nurse was by her bed-side night and day ; and the old aunt became more 
and more peevish, and was more and more spoken of by the Tracy fam- 
ily — in her possible hearing, as "that dear old soul" — out of it, "that 
vile old witch." 

Charles, to be sure, was an exception in all this, as he ever was : for 
he took on him the Christian office of reading many prayers to the poor 
decaying creature, and (only that his father would not hear of such a 
thing) desired to have the vicar to assist him. Emily also, full of sym- 
pathy, and disinterested care, would watch the fretful patient, hour after 
hour, in those long, dull nights of pain ; and the poor, old, perishing sin- 
ner loved her coming, for she spoke to her the words of hope and resig- 
nation. Whether that sweet missionary, scarcely yet a convert from her 
own dark creed — (Alas! the Amina had offered unto Juggernaut, and 
Emily of the strong hill-fort had scarcely heard of any truer God ; and 
the fair girl was a woman-grown before, in her first earthly love, she 
also came to know the mercies Heaven has in store for us) — whether 
unto any lasting use she prayed and reasoned with that hard, dried heart, 
none but the Omniscient can tell. Let us hope: let us hope; for the fret- 
ful voice was stilled, and the cloudy forehead brightened, and the hag- 

16* 



% 



186 THE TWINS. 

gard eyes looked clicerfully to meet the inevitable slr'oke of death. 
Thus in wisdom and in charity, in patience and in faith, that gentle pair 
of lovers comforted the dying soul. 

However, days rolled away, and Aunt Green lingered on still, tena- 
ciously clinging unto life : until one morning early, she felt so much 
better, that she insisted on being propped up by pillows, and seeing all 
the household round her bed to speak to them. So up came every one, 
in no small hope of legacies, and what the lawyers call " donationes jnor- 
lis causa." 

The general was at her bed's-head, with, I am ashamed to say, per- 
haps unconsciously, a countenance more ridiculous than lugubrious; 
though he tried to subdue the buoyancy of hope and to put on looks of 
decent mourning ; on the other side, the long-expectant legatee. Niece 
Jane, prudently concealed her questionable grief behind a scented 
pocket-handkerchief. Julian held somewhat aloof, for the scene was 
too depressing for his taste : so he affected to read a prayer-book, wrong 
way up, with his tongue in his cheek : Charles, deeply solemnized at 
the near approach of death, knelt at the poor invalid's bedside; and 
Emily stood by, leaning over her, suffused in tears. At the further cor- 
ners of the bed, might be seen an old servant or two ; and Mrs. Green's 
butler and coachman, each a forty years' fixture, presented their gray 
heads at the bottom of the room, and really looked exceedingly concerned. 

Mrs. Green addressed them first, in her feeble broken manner: 
" Grant — and John — good and faithful — thank you — thank you both ; 
and you too, kind Mrs. Lloyd, and Sally, and nurse — what's-your-name : 
give them the packets, nurse — all marked — first drawer, desk : there — 
there — God bless you — good — faithful." 

The old servants, full of sorrow at her approaching loss, were com- 
forted too: for a kind word, and a hundred pound note a-piece, made 
amends for much bereavement: the sick-nurse found her gift was just a 
tithe of their's, and recognised the difference both just and kind. 

"Niece Jane — you've waited — long — for — this day: my will — 
rewards you." 

" O dear — dear aunt, pray don't talk so ; you '11 recover yet, pray — 
pray don't:" she pretended to drown the rest in sorrow, but winked at 
her husband over the handkerchief. 

"Julian!" (the precious youth attempted to look miserable, and came 
as called,) "you will find — I have remembered — you, Julian," So he 
winked, too, at his mother, and tried to blubber a "thank you." 



/• 



AUNT GREEN'S LEGACY. 187 

" Charles — where 's Charles ? give me your hand, Charles dear — let 
me feel your face : here, Charles — a little pocket-book — good lad — good 
lad. There's Emily, too — dear child, she came — too late — I forgot her 
— I forgot her ! general give her half — half — if you love — love — Emi — " 

All at once her jaw dropped ; her eyes, which had till now been pre- 
ternaturally bright, filmed over ; her head fell back upon the pillow ; 
and the rich old aunt was dead. 

Julian gave a shout that might have scared the parting spirit! 

Really, the general was shocked, and Mrs. Tracy too; and the ser- 
vants murmured "shame — shame!" poor Charles hid his face; Emily 
looked up indignantly ; but Julian asked, with an oath, " Where 's the 
good of being hypocrites?" and then added, "now, mother, let us find 
the will." 

Then the nurse went to close the dim glazed eyes ; and the other sor- 
rowing domestics slunk away ; and Charles led Emily out of the cham- 
ber of death, saddened and shocked at such indecent haste. 

Meanwhile, the hopeful trio rummaged every drawer — tumbled out 
the mingled contents of boxes, desk, and escritoire — still, no will — no 
will : and at last the nurse, who more than once had muttered, " Shame 
on you all," beneath her breath, said, 

"If you want the will, it 's under her pillow : but don't disturb her yet, 
poor thing!" 

Julian's rude hand had already thrust aside the lifeless, yielding head, 
and clutched the will : the father and mother — though humbled and won- 
der-stricken at his daring — gathered round him ; and he read aloud, 
boldly and steadily to the end, though with scowling brow, and many 
curses interjectional : 

"In the name of God, Amen. I, Constance Green, make this my last 
will and testament. Forasmuch as my niece, Jane Tracy, has watched 
and waited for my death these two-and-twenty years, I leave her all the 
shoes, slippers, and goloshes, whereof I may happen to die possessed : 
item, I leave Julian, her son, my ' Whole Duty of Man,^ convinced that he 
is deficient in it all : item, I confirm all the gifts which I intend to make 
upon my death-bed : item, forasmuch as General Tracy, my niece's hus- 
band, on his return from abroad, greeted me with much affection, I 
bequeath and give to him five thousand pounds' worth of Exchequer 
bills, now in my banker's hands; and appoint him my sole executor. 
As to my landed property, it will all go, in course of law, to my heir, 



188 THE TWINS. 

Samuel Hayley, and may he and his long enjoy it. And as to the 
remainder of my personal effects, including nine thousand pounds bank 
stock, my Dutch fives, and other matters, whereof I may die possessed 
(seeing that my relatives are rich enough w^ithout my help), I give and 
bequeath the same, subject as hereinbefore stated, to the trustees, for the 
time being, of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, in trust, for the pur- 
poses of that charitable institution. In witness whereof, I have here- 
unto set my hand and seal this 13th day of May, 1840. 

"Constance Green." 

"Duly signed, sealed, and delivered! d — nation!" was Julian's brief 
epilogue — "General, let's burn it." 

"You can if you please, Mr. Julian," interposed the nurse, who had 
secretly enjoyed all this, "and if you like to take the consequences; but, 
as each of the three witnesses has the will sealed up in copy, and the poor 
deceased there took pains to sign them all, perhaps — " 

This settled the affair: and the discomfited expectants made a pre- 
cipitate retreat. As the general, however, got vastly more than he 
expected, for his individual merits ; and seeing that he loved Emily as 
much as he hated both Julian and his wife, he really felt well-pleased 
upon the whole, and took on him the duties of executor with cheerful- 
ness. So they buried Aunt Green as soon as might be. 



CHAPTER XI. 

PREPAEATIONS MD DEPARTURE. 

Charles's pocket-book was full of clean bank notes, fifteen hundred 
pounds' worth : it contained also a diamond ring, and a lock of silvery 
hair ; the latter a proof of affectionate sentiment in the kind old soul, 
that touched him at the heart. 

" And now, my Emmy, the way is clear to us ; Providence has sent 
me this, that I may right you, dearest : and it will be wise in us to say 
nothing of our plans. Avoid inquiries — for I did not say conceal or 
falsify facts : but, while none but you, love, heed of my departure, and 
while 1 go for our sakes alone, we need not invite disappointment by open- 



PREPARATIONS AND DEPARTURE. igg 

Hiouthed publicity. To those who love me, Emmy, I am frank and 
free; but with those who love us not, there is a wisdom and a justice in 
concealment. They do not deserve confidence, who will not extend to 
us their sympathy. None but yourself must know whither I am bound; 
and, after some little search for curiosity's sake, when a week is past 
and gone, no soul will care for me of those at home. With you, I will 
manage to communicate by post, directing my letters to Mrs. Sainsbury, 
at Oxton : I will prepare her for it. She knows my love for you, and 
how they try to thwart us ; but even she, however trustworthy, need not 
be told my destination yet awhile, until 'India' appears upon the post- 
mark. How glad will you be, dearest one, how happy in our secret — 
to read my heart's own thoughts, when I am far away — far away, clear- 
ing up mine Emmy's cares, and telling her how blessed I feel in min- 
istering to her happiness!" 

Such was the substance of their talk, while counting out the pocket-book. 

Charles's remaining preparations were simple enough, now his purse 
was flush of money : he resolved upon taking from his home no luggage 
whatever : preferring to order down, from an outfitting house in London, 
a regular kit of cadet's necessaries, to wait for him at the Europe Hotel, 
Plymouth, on a certain day in the ensuing week. So that, burdened 
only with his Emmy's miniature, and his pocket-book of bank notes, he 
might depart quietly some evening, get to Plymouth in a preconcerted 
way, by chaise or coach, before the morrow morning ; thence, a boat to 
meet the ship oif-shore, and then — hey, for the Indies ! 

It was as well-devised a scheme as could possibly be planned ; though 
its secresy, especially with a mother in the case, may be a moot point as 
to the abstract moral thereof: nevertheless, concretely, the only heart 
his so mysterious absence would have pained, was made aware of all : 
then, again, secresy had been the atmosphere of his daily life, the breath 
of his education ; and he too sorely knew his mother would rejoice at the 
departure, and Julian, too — all the more certainly, as both brothers were 
now rivals professed for the hand of Emily Warren : as to the general, 
he might, or he might not, smoke an extra cheroot in the excitement of 
his wonder; and if he cared about it anyways more tragically than 
tobacco might betray, Emily knew how to comfort him. 

With respect to other arrangements, Emmy furnished Charles with 
letters to certain useful people at Madras, and in particular to the "some- 
body " who looked after Mrs. Mackie : so, the mystery was easy of 
access, and he doubted not of overcoming, on the spot, every unseen dif- 



190 THE TWINS. 

ficulty. The plan of leaving all luggage behind, a capital idea, would 
enable him to go forth freely and unshackled, with an ordinary air, in 
hat and great-coat, as for an evening's walk ; and was quite in keeping 
with the natural reserve of his whole character — a bad habit of secresy, 
which he probably inherited from his father, the lieutenant of old times. 
And yet, for all the wisdom, and mystery, and shrewd settling of the 
plan, its accomplishment was as nearly as possible most fatally defeated. 

The important evening arrived ; for the Indiaman — it was our old 
friend Sir William Elphinston — would be off Plymouth, next morning : 
the goods had been, for a day or two, safely deposited at the Europe, as 
per invoice, all paid : the lovers, in this last, this happiest, yet by far the 
saddest of their stolen interviews, had exchanged vows and kisses, and 
upon the beach, beneath those friendly cliffs, had commended one 
another to their Father in heaven. They had returned to the unsocial 
circle of home ; all was fixed ; the clock struck nine : and Charles, 
accidentally squeezing Emily's hand, rose to leave the tea-table. 

"Where are you going, Mr. Charles?" 

"I am going out, Julian." 

"Thank you, sir! I knew that, but whither? General, I say, here's 
Charles going to serenade somebody by moonlight." 

The brandy-sodden parent, scarcely conscious, said something about 
his infernal majesty; and, "What then? — let him go, can't you?" 

" Well, Julian dear, perhaps your brother will not mind your going 
with him ; particularly as Emily stays at home with me." 

This Mrs. Tracy spoke archly, intended as a hint to induce Julian to 
remain : but he had other thoughts — and simply said, in an ill-tempered 
tone of voice, "Done, Charles." 

It was a dilemma for our escaping hero; but glancing a last look at 
Emily, he departed, and walked on some way as quietly as might be 
with Julian by his side : thinking, perhaps, he would soon be tired ; and 
suffering him to fancy, if he would, that Charles was bound either on 
some amorous pilgrimage, or some charitable mission. But they left 
Burleigh behind them — and got upon the common — and passed it by, 
far out of sight and out of hearing — and were skirting the high banks 
of the darkly-flowing Mullet — and still there was Julian sullenly beside 
him. In vain Charles had tried, by many gentle words, to draw him 
into common conversation : Julian would not speak, or only gave utter- 
ance to some hinted phrase of insult : his brow was even darker than 
usual, and night was coming on apace, and he still tramped steadily 



PREPARATIONS AND DEPARTURE. igi 

along beside his brother, digging his sturdy stick into the clay, for very 
spite's sake. At length, as they yet walked along the river's side in 
that unfrequented place, Julian said, on a sudden, in a low strange tone, 
as if keeping down some rising rage within him, 

" Mr. Charles, you love Emily Warren." 

"Well, Julian, and who can help loving her?" 

It was innocently said ; but still a maddening answer, for he loved 
her too. 

"And, sirrah," the brother hoarsely added, "she — she does not — 
does not — hate you, sir, as I do." 

"My good Julian, pray do not be so violent; I cannot help it if the 
dear girl loves me." 

"But I can, though!" roared Julian, with an oath, and lifted up his 
stick — it was nearer like a club — to strike his brother. 

"Julian, Julian, what are you about? Good Heavens! you would 
not — you dare not — give over — unhand me, brother; what have I done, 
that you should strike me? Oh! leave me — leave me — pray." 

"Leave you ? I will leave you !" the villain almost shouted, and smote 
him to the ground with his lead-loaded stick. It was a blow that must 
have killed him, but for the interposing hat, now battered down upon his 
bleeding head. Charles, at length thoroughly aroused, though his foe 
must be a brother, struggled with unusual strength in self-preserving 
instinct, wrested the club from Julian's hand, and stood on the defensive. 

Julian was staggered: and, after a moment's irresolution, drawing a 
pistol from his pocket, said, in a terribly calm voice, 

"Now, sir! I have looked for such a meeting many days — alone, by 
night, with you ! I would not willingly draw trigger, for the noise might 
bring down other folks upon us, out of Oxton yonder : but, drop that 
stick, or I fire." 

Charles was noble enough, without another word, to fling the club into 
the river : it was not fear of harm, but fear of sin, that made him trust 
himself defenceless to a brother, a twin-brother, in the dark: he could 
not be so base, a murderer, a fratricide! Oh! most unhallowed thought! 
Save him from this crime, good God ! Then, instantaneously reflecting, 
and believing he decided for the best, when he saw the ruffian glaring 
on him with exulting looks, as upon an unarmed rival at his mercy, with 
no man near to stay the deed, and none but God to see it, Charles resol ved 
to seek safety from so terrible a death in flight. 

Oxton was within one mile ; and, clearly, this was not like flying from 



192 THE TWINS. 

danger as a coward, but fleeing from attempted crime, as a brother and 
a Christian. Julian snatched at him to catch him as he passed : and, 
failing in this, rushed after him. It was a race for life ! and they went 
like the wind, for two hundred yards, along that muddy high-banked walk. 

Suddenly, Charles slipped upon the clay, that he fell ; and Julian, with 
a savage howl, leapt upon him heavily. 

Poor youth, he knew that death was nigh, and only uttered, "God 
forgive you, brother! oh, spare me — or, if not me, spare yourself — 
Julian, Julian !" 

But the monster was determined. Exerting the whole force of his 
herculean frame, he seized his scarce-resisting victim as he lay, and, 
lifting him up like a child, flung his own twin-brother head foremost into 
that darkly-flowing current ! 

There was one piercing ciy — a splash — a struggle ; and again nothing 
broke upon the silent night, but the murmur of that swingemg tide, as 
the Mullet huri-ied eddying to the sea. 

Julian listened a minute or two, flung some stones at random into the 
river, and then hastily ran back to Burleigh, feeling like a Cain. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ESCAPE. 

But the overruling hand of Him whose aid that victim had invoked, 
was now stretched forth to save ! and the strong-flowing tide, that ran 
too rapidly for Charles to sink in it, was commissioned from on High to 
carry him into an angle of that tortuous stream, where he clung by 
instinct to the bushes. Silence was his wisdom, while the murderer 
was near : and so long as Julian's footsteps echoed on the banks, Cliarles 
stirred not, spoke not, but only silently thanked God for his wonderful 
deliverance. However, the footsteps quickly died away, though heard 
far off" clattering amid the still and listening night; and Charles, thank- 
fully, no less than cautiously, drew himself out of the stream, very little 
harmed beyond a drenching : for the waters had recovered him at once 
from the effects of that desperate blow. 

It wr.s with a sense of exultation, freedom, independence, that he now 



THE ESCAPE. jgg 

hastened scatheless on his way : dripping garments mattered nothing, nor 
mud, nor the loss of his demolished hat: the pocket-book was safe, and 
IvMimy's portrait, (how he kissed it, then!) and luckily a travelling cap 
was in his great-coat pocket : so with a most buoyant feeling of animal 
delight, as well as of religious gratitude, he sped merrily once more upon 
his secret expedition. Thank Heaven ! Emmy could not know the peril 
lie had past: and wretched Julian would now have dreadful reason of his 
own for this mysterious absence : and it was a pleasant thing to trudge 
along so freely in the starlight, on the private embassy of love. Happy 
Charles ! I know not if ever more exhilarated feelings blessed the youth ; 
they made him trip along the silent road, in a gush of joyfulness, at the 
rate of some six miles an hour; I know not if ever such delicious 
thoughts of Emily's attachment, and those gorgeous mysteries in India, 
of adventure, enterprise, escape, had heretofore caused his heart to 
bound so lightsomely within him, like some elastic spring. I know not 
if ever strong reliance upon Providential care, more earnest prayers, 
praises, intercessions (for poor Julian, too,). were offered on the altar of 
his soul. Happy Charles ! 

So he went on and on — long past Oxton, and Eyemouth, and Surbiton, 
and over the ferry, and through the sleeping turnpikes, and past the 
bridge, and along the broad high-road, until gray of morning's dawn 
revealed the suburbs of Plymouth. 

Of course he missed the mail by which he intended to have gone — 
for Julian's dread act delayed him. 

Long before his journey's end, his clothes were thoroughly dried, and 
violent exercise had shaken off all possible rheumatic consequence of 
that fearful plunge beneath the waters : five-and-twenty miles in four 
hours and three-quarters, is a tolerable recipe for those who have tum- 
bled into rivers. We must recollect that he had gone as quick as he 
could, for fear of being late, now the coach had passed. At a little coun- 
try inn, he brushed, and washed, and made toilet as well as he was able, 
took a glass of good Cognac, both hot and strong ; and felt more of a 
man than ever. 

Then, having loitered awhile, and well-remembered Emily in his 
prayers, at about eight in the morning he presented himself among his 
luggage at the Europe in gentlemanly trim, and soon got all on board 
the pilot boat, to meet the Indiaman just outside the breakwater. We 
may safely leave him there, happy, hopeful Charles ! Sanguine for the 
future, exulting in the present, and thankful for the past: already has 
N 17 



194 THE TWINS. 

he poured out all his joys before that Friend who loves her too, and 
invoked His blessing on a scheme so well designed, so providentially 
accomplished. 

I had almost forgotten Julian : wretched, hardened man, and how 
fared he ? The moment he had flung his brother into that dark stream, 
and the waters closed above him greedily that he was gone — gone for 
ever, he first threw in stones to make a noise like life upon the stream, but 
that cheatery was only for an instant : he was alone — a murderer, alone ! 
the horrors of silence, solitude, and guilt, seized upon him like three 
furies: so his quick retreating walk became a running; and the run- 
ning soon was wild and swift for fear ; and ever as he ran, that piercing 
scream came upon the wind behind, and hooted him : his head swam, his 
eyes saw terrible sights, his ears heard terrible sounds — and he scoured 
into quiet, sleeping Burleigh like a madman. However, by some strange 
good luck, not even did the slumbering watchman see him : so he got 
in-doors as usual with the latch-key (it was not the first time he had been 
out at night), crept up quietly, and hid himself in his own chamber. 

And how did he spend those hours of guilty solitude? in terrors? in 
remorse? in misery? Not he : Julian was too wise to sit and think, and 
in the dark too ; but he lit both reading lamps to keep away the gloom, 
and smoked and drank till morning's dawn to stupify his conscience. 

Then, to make it seem all right, he went down to breakfast as usual, 
though any thing but sober, and met unflinchingly his mother's natural 
question — 

"Good morning, Julian — where 's Charles?" 

"How should I know, mother; isn't he up yet?" 

" No, my dear ; and what is more, I doubt if he came home last night." 

" Hollo, Master Charles ! pretty doings these, Mr. Sabbath,-teacher ! so 
he slept out, eh, mother?" 

"I don't know — but where did you leave him, Julian?" 

"Who! I? did I go out with him? Oh! yes, now I recollect: Irt's 
see, we strolled together midway to Oxton, and, as he was going some- 
what further, there I left him?" 

How true the words, and yet how terribly false their meaning! 

"Dear me, that's very odd — isn't it, general?" 

"Not at all, ma'am — not at all; leave the lad alone, he'll be back by 
dinner-time : I didn't think the boy had so much spirit." 

Emily, to whom the general's hint was Greek, looked up cheerfuilv 
and in her own glad mind chuckled at her Charles's bold adventure. 



THE ESCAPE. 



195 



But the day passed, off, and they sent out men to seek for him : and 
another — and all Burleigh was a-stir : and another — and the coast-guards 
from Lyme to Plymouth Sound searched every hole and coi'ner: and 
another — when his mother wept five minutes : and another — when the 
wonder was forgotten. 

However, they did not put on mourning for the truant : he might turn 
up yet: perhaps he was at Oxford. 

Emily had not much to do in comforting the general for his dear son's 
loss ; it clearly was a gain to him, and he felt far freer than when wis- 
dom's eye was on him. Charles had been too keen for father, mother, 
and brother ; too good, too amiable : he saw their ill, condemned it by 
his life, and showed their dark too black against his brightness. The 
unnatural deficiency of mother's love had not been overrated : Julian 
had all her heart; and she felt only obliged to the decamping Charles 
for leaving Emily so free and clear to his delightful brother. She never 
thought him dead : death was a repulsive notion at all times to her : no 
doubt he would turn up again some day. And Julian joked with her 
about that musty proverb "a bad penny." 

As to our dear heroine, she never felt so happy in all her life before 
as now, even when her Charles had been beside her; for within a day 
of his departure he had written her a note full of affection, hope, and 
gladness; assuring her of his health, and wealth, and safe arrival on 
board the Indiaman. The noble-hearted youth never said one single 
word about his brother's crime : but he did warn his Emmy to keep 
close beside the general. This note she got through Mrs. Sainsbury ; 
that invalid lady at Oxton, who never troubled herself to ask or hear one 
word beyond her own little world — a certain physic-corner cupboard. 

And thou — poor miserable man — thou fratricide in mind — and to thy 
best belief in act, how drags on now the burden of thy life? For a day 
or two, spirits and segars muddled his brain, and so kept thoughts away : 
but within a while they came on him too piercingly, and Julian writhed 
beneath those scorpion stings of hot and keen remorse : and when the 
coast-guards dragged the Mullet, how that caitiff trembled! and when 
nothing could be found, how he wondered fearingly ! The only thing 
the wretched man could do, was to loiter, day after day, and all day 
long, upon the same high path which skirts the tortuous stream. Fasci- 
nated there by hideous recollections, he could not leave the spot foi 
hours : and his soft-headed, romantic mother, noticing these deep abstrac- 
tions, blessed him — fur her Julian was now in love with Emily. 



196 THE TWINS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

NEWS OF CHARLES. 

A.r — in love with Emily ! Fiercely now did Julian pour his thoughts 
that way; if only hoping to forget murder in another strong excite- 
ment. Julian listened to his mother's counsels ; and that silly, cheated 
woman playfully would lean upon his arm, like a huge, coy confidante, 
and fill his greedy ears (that heard her gladly for very holiday's sake 
from fearful apprehensions), with lover's hopes, lover's themes, his Emi- 
ly's perfection. Delighted mother — how proud and pleased was she! 
([uite in her own element, fanning dear Julian's most sentimental flame, 
;!.ad scheming for him interviews with Emily. 

It required all her skill — for the girl clung closely to her guardian : 
he, unconscious Argus, never tired of her company; and she, remem- 
bering dear Charles's hint, and dreading to be left alone whh Julian, 
would persist to sit day after day at her books, music, or needle-work in 
the study, charming General Tracy by her pretty Hindoo songs. With 
!iim she walked out, and with him she came in ; she would read to him 
for hours, whether he snored or listened ; and, really, both mother and 
son were several long weeks before their scheming could come to any 
thing. A tiie-a-tHe between Julian and Emily appeared as impossible 
to manage, as collision between Jupiter and Vesta. 

However, after some six weeks of this sort of mining and counter- 
mining (for Emily divined their wishes), all on a sudden one morning 
the general received a letter that demanded his immediate presence for 
a day or two in town ; something about prize-money at Puttymuddy- 
fudgepoor. Emily was too high-spirited, too delicate in mind, to tell her 
.f^uardian of fears which never miwht be realized ; and so, with some 
forebodings, but a cheerful trust, too, in a Providence above her, she saw 
the general off without a word, though not without a tear ; he too, that 
stern, close man, was moved : it was strange to see them love each 
other so. 

The moment lie was gone, she discreetly kept her chamber for the 
day, on plea of sickness ; she had cried very heartily to see him leave 
her — he had never yet left her once since she could recollect — and thus 
she really had a head-ache, and a bad one. 



NEWS OF CHARLES. I97 

Next morning, she would gladly have found any just excuse for 
absence from the breakfast-table — fever, small-pox, cholera, any thing : 
for Julian's attentions were more dreaded than them all. But she was 
quite recovered now, and a ship-letter, that morning arrived frcni 
Charles, all well, and merrily bounding over the salt sea, had put her in 
such high spirits, that, with something of just pride and matronly forti- 
tude, she determined to confront Mrs. Tracy and her son. Verily, her 
frank and cheerly trustfulness quite staggered the conspiring pair: for 
Emily had been strengthened by prayerful trust towai'ds God, and felt 
happy in her well-requited love. 

She was the first to speak. "Good-morrow, Mrs. Tracy ; how do you 
do, Julian ? I am afraid to say, you don't look quite so well as usual." 

Indeed, he did not; for ghastly fears racked him, and unsatisfied 
desires : he was pale, wasted, miserable. So he awkwardly answered 
her address with a common "how d'ye dol" 

"Julian has lost his spirits lately very much, my dear: I dare say 
you can guess the cause?" As if either of them could ! 

"The cause, Mrs. Tracy? I am sure I cannot; at least," she added, 
somewhat mischievously, "unless he is anxious about Charles." 

"What about Charles?" hurriedly asked Julian, in a wild and nerv- 
ous way. 

"Why, we all know he is missing, don't we, Julian? and has been 
for these six weeks: I am sure it does you credit to seem so altered 
since he went." 

"Went? whither?" earnestly asked the mother, who really had begun 
to find out that she loved her now lost child : "whither, dearest Emily? 
oh, do you know ? do you know ? tell me — tell me." 

To Emily's great surprise, Mrs. Tracy shed real tears of evident 
affection and sorrow ; though a silly and weak one, she was a mother 
still, and Charles a son, although too good for her. 

Accordingly Emily, in the fullness of her sympathy, and with some 
natural exultation of spirits, now that Charles had got a fair start (he was 
at the Cape by this time), gayly answered — 

" Dear Mrs. Tracy, I rejoice to be able to assure you, that you need 
not entertain a fear or doubt of Charles's welfare ; though I am a woman, 
I can keep a secret, you see ;" (the dear girl was babbling it all the while, 
quite unconscious of her contradiction;) "Charles is gone to India, to 
find out who I am, and I heard from him this morning — all well at 
St. Helena!" 

17* 



198 THE TWINS. 

Julian Tracy gave such a start, that he knocked off a cheffonier of 
rare china and glass standing at his elbow ; and the smash of manda- 
rins and porcelain gods would have been enough, at any other time, to 
have driven his mother crazy. 

"Charles alive?" shouted he. 

"Yes, Julian — why not? You saw him off, you know: cannot you 
remember?" 

Now to that guilty wretch's mind the fearful notion instantaneously 
occurred, that Emily Warren was in some strange, wild way bantering 
him; she knew his dreadful secret — "he had seen him off." He trem- 
bled like an aspen as she looked on him. 

" Oh yes, he remembered, certainly ; but — but where was her letter?" 

"Never mind that, Julian ; you surely would not read another per- 
son's letters, Monsieur le Chevalier Bayard?" 

Emily was as gay at heart that morning as a sky-lark, and her inno- 
cent pleasantry proved her strongest shield. Julian dared not ask to see 
the letter — scarcely dared to hope she had one, and yet did not know 
what to think. As to any love scene now, it was quite out of the ques- 
tion, notwithstanding all his mother's hints and management ; a new 
exciting thought entirely filled him : was he a Cain, a fratricide, or not? 
was Charles alive after all? And, for once in his life, Julian had some 
repentant feelings; tor thrilling hope was nigh to cheer his gloom. 

It really seemed as if Emily, sweet innocent, could read his inmost 
thoughts. "At any rate," observed she, playfully, "Bayard may take 
the postman's privilege, and see the outside." 

With that, she produced the ship-letter that had put her in such spirits, 
legibly dated some twenty-two days ago. Yes, Charles's hand, sure 
enough! Julian could swear to it among a thousand. And he fainted 
dead away. 

What an astonishing event! how Mrs. Tracy praised her noble-spir- 
ited boy ! How the bells rang ! and hot water, and cold water, and salts, 
and rubbings, and eau de Cologne, and all manner of delicate attentions, 
long sustained, at length contributed to Julian's restoration. Moreover, 
even Emily was agreeably surprised ; she had never seen him in so 
amiable a light before ; this was all feeling, all affection for his brother 
— her dear — dear Charles. And when Mrs. Tracy heard what Emily 
said of Julian's feeling heart, she became positively triumphant ; not 
half so much at Charles's safety, and all that, as at Julian's burst of 
feeling. She was quite right, after all ; he was worthy to be her favour- 



THE TETE-A-TETE. I99 

ite, and she felt both flattered and obliged to him for fainting dead away. 
"Yes — yes, my dear Miss Warren, depend upon it Julian has fine feel- 
ings, and a good heart." And Emily began to condemn both Charles 
and herself for lack of charity, and to think so too. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TETE-A-TETE. 

No sooner had "dear Julian" recovered, which he really had not 
quite accomplished until the day had begun to wear away (so great a 
shock had that intelligence of Charles been to his guilty mind), than the 
gratified and prudent mother fancied this a famous opportunity to leave 
the young couple to themselves. It was after dinner, when they had 
retired to the drawing-room; and I will say that Emily had never 
seemed so favourably disposed towards that rough, but generous, heart 
before. So then, on some significant pretence, well satisfied her favourite 
was himself again, as bold, and black, and boisterous as ever, the mas- 
culine mother kissed her hand to them, as a fat fairy might be supposed 
to do, and operatically tripped away, coyly bidding Emily "take care 
of Julian till she should come back again." 

The momentary gleam of good which glanced across that bad man's 
heart has faded away hours ago ; his repentant thoughts had been occa- 
sioned more from the sudden relief he experienced at running now no 
risks for having murdered, than for any better feeling towards his 
brother, or any humbler notions of himself. Nay, a strong reaction 
occurred in his ideas the moment he had seen his brother's writing; 
and when he fainted, he fainted from the struggle in his mind of mani- 
fold exciting causes, such as these : — hatred, jealousy, what he called 
love, though a lower name befitted it, and vexation that his brother was 
— not dead. Oh mother, mother ! if your poor weak head had but been 
wise enough to read that heart, would you still have loved it as you do? 
Alas — it is a deep lesson in human nature this — she would ! for Mrs. 
General Tracy was one of those obstinate, yet superficial characters, 
whom no reason can convince that they are wrong, no power can oblige 
to confess themselves mistaken. She rejoiced to hear him called "her 



200 THE TWINS. 

very image;" and predominant vanity in -the large coquette extended to 
herself at second-hand ; self was her idol substance, and its delightful 
shadow was this mother's son. 

The moment Mrs. Tracy left the room, Julian perceived his opportu- 
nity: Charles, detested rival, far away at sea; the guardian gone to 
London ; Emily in an unusual flow of affability and kindness, and he — 
alone with her. Rashly did he bask his soul in her delicious beauty, 
deliberately drinking deep of that intoxicating draught. Giving the 
rein to passion, he suffered that tumultuous steed to hurry him whither 
it would, in mad unbridled course. He sat so long silently gazing at 
her with the lack-lustre eyes of low and dull desire, that Emily, quite 
thrown off her guard by that amiable fainting for his brother, addressed 
him in her innocent kind-heartedness, 

"Are }^ou not recovered yet, dear Julian?" 

The effect was instantaneous : scarcely crediting his ears that heard 
her call him "dear," his eyes, that saw her winning smile upon him, he 
started from his chair, and trembling with agitation, flung himself at her 
feet, to Emily's unqualified astonishment. 

"Why, Julian, what's the matter? — unhand me, sir! let go!" (for he 
had got hold of her wrist.) 

The passionate youth seized her hand — that one with Charles's ring 
upon it — and would have kissed it wildly with polluting lips, had she 
not shrieked suddenly "Help! help!" 

Instantly his other hand was roughly dashed upon her mouth — so 
roughly that it almost knocked her backwards — and the blood flowed 
from her wounded lip; but by a preternatural effort, the indignant 
Indian queen hurled the ruffian from her, flew to the bell, and kept on 
ringing violently. 

In less than half a minute all the household was around her, headed 
by the startled Mrs. Tracy, who had all the while been listening in the 
other drawing-room : butler, footmen, house-maids, ladies'-maids, cook, 
scullions, and all rushed in, thinking the house was on fire. 

No need to explain by a word. Emily, radiant in imperial charms, 
stood, like inspired Cassandra, flashing indignation from her eyes at the 
cowering caitiff on the floor. The mother, turning all manner of col- 
ours, dropped on her knees to "poor Julian's" assistance, affecting to 
believe him taken ill. But Emily Warren, whose insulted pride vouch- 
safed not a word to that guilty couple, soon undeceived all parties, by 
addressing the butler in a voice tremulous and broken — 



THE TETE-A-TETE. 201 

" Mr. Saunders — be so good — as to go — to Sir Abraham Tamworth's 
— in the square — and request of him — a night's — protection — for a 
poor — defenceless, insulted woman!" 

She could hardly utter the last words for choking tears : but immedi- 
ately battling down her feelings, added, with the calmness of a heroine — 

"You are a father, Mr. Saunders — set all this before Sir Abraham 
strongly, but delicately. 

" Footmen ! so long as that wretch is in the room, protect me, as you 
are men." 

And the stately beauty placed herself between the two liveried 
lacqueys, as Zenobia in the middle of her guards. 

"Marguerite!" — the pretty little Frangaise tripped up to her — "wipe 
this blood from my face." 

Beautiful, insulted creature! I thought that I looked upon some 
wounded Boadicea, with her daughters extracting the arrow from 
her cheek. 

" And now, kind Charlotte, fetch my cloak ; and follow me to Pros- 
pect House, with what I may require for the night. Till the general's 
return, I stay not here one minute." 

Then, without a syllable, or a look of leave-taking, the wise and noble 
girl — doubtless unconsciously remembering her early Hindoo braveries, 
the lines of matchlock men, the bowing slaves, the processions, and her 
jewelled state of old — marched away in magnificent beauty, accom- 
panied in silence by the whole astonished household. 

Mrs. Tracy and her son were left alone : the silly, silly mother thought 
him "hardly used." Julian, whose natural effrontery had entirely 
deserted him, looked like what he was — a guilty coward : and the 
mother, who had pampered up her " fine high-spirited son " to his full- 
grown criminality by a foolish education, really — when she had time to 
think of any thing but him — was excessively frightened. The general 
would be back to-morrow, and then — and then ! — she dreaded to picture 
that explosion of his wrath. 



202 THE TWINS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

SATISFACTION. 

Sir Abraham Tamworth, G. C. B. — a fine old Admiral of the White, 
who somewhat looked down upon the rank of General, H. E. I. C. S. — 
was astonished, as well he might be, at Mr. Saunders, and his message : 
and, of course, most gladly acquiesced in acting as poor Emily's pro- 
tector. Accordingly, however jealous Lady Tamworth and her daughters 
might heretofore have felt of that bright beauty at the balls, they were 
now all genuine sympathy, indignation, and affection. Emily, I need 
hardly say, went straight up stairs to have her cry out. 

" Whom are you writing to, George, in such a hurry ?" asked the 
admiral, of a fine moustachioed son, George St. Vincent Tamworth, of 
the Royal Horse Guards, who had just got six months' leave of absence 
for the sake of marriage with his cousin. 

The gallant soldier tossed a billet to his father, who mounted his spec- 
tacles, and quietly read it at the lamp. 

"Captain Tamworth desires Mr. Julian Tracy's company to-morrow 
morning, at seven o'clock, in the third meadow on the Oxton road. The 
captain brings a friend with him; also pistols and a surgeon; and he 
desires Mr. Tracy to do the like : Prospect House, Thursday evening." 

"So, George, you consider him a gentleman, do you? I am afraid 
it's a poor compliment to our fair young friend." And he quietly 
crumpled up the challenge in his iron hand. 

" Really, sir ! — you surprise me ; — pardon me, but I will send that 
note: mustn't I chastise the fellow for this insufferable outrage?" 

"No doubt, George, no doubt of it at all: wlien a lady is insulted, 
and a man (not to say a queen's officer) stands by without taking notice 
of it, he deserves whipping at the cart's-tail, and Coventry for life. I 've 
no patience, boy, with such mean meekness, as putting up with bullying 
insolence when a woman 's in the case. Let a man show moral courage, 
if he can and will, in his own affront ; I honour him who turns on his 
heel from common personal insult, and only wish my own old blood was 
cool enough to do so : but the mother, wife, and sister, ay, George, and 
the poor defenceless one, be she lady, peasant, or menial, who comes to 
us for safety in a woman's dress, we must take up their quarrel, or we 
are not men! — " 



• SATISFACTION. 203 

"Don't interrupt him, George," uxoriously suggested Lady Tarn worth, 
"your father hasn't done talking yet." For George was getting tei'ribly 
impatient; he knew, from sad experience, how much the admiral was 
given to prosing. However, the oration soon proceeded to our captain's 
entire satisfaction, after his progenitor had paused awhile for breath's 
sake in his eloquence. 

" — Take up their quarrel, or we are not men. Nevertheless, boy, I 
cannot see the need of pistols. The only conceivable case for violent 
redress, is woman's wrong: and he who wrongs a woman, cannot be a 
gentleman ; therefore, ought not to be met on equal terms. For other 
causes of duello, as hot-headed speeches, rudenesses, or slights, forgive, 
forbear to fan the flame, and never be above apologizing : but in an out- 
rage such as this, let a fine-built fellow, such as you are, George (and 
the wom-^n should show wisdom in their choice of champions), let a man, 
and a queen's officer as you are, treat this brute, Julian Tracy, as a 
martinet huntsman would a hound thrown out. As for me, boy, I'm 
going to call on Mrs. Tracy at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning — and, 
without presuming to advise a six foot two of a son, I think — 1 think, if 
I were you, I would be dutiful enough to say — 'Father, I will accom- 
pany you — and take a horsewhip with me.' " 

"Agreed, agreed, sir!" replied the well-pleased son, and her ladyship 
too vouchsafed her approbation. 

Emily had gone to bed long ago, or rather to her chainber; where 
the three Misses Tamworth had been all kindness, curiosity, and conso- 
lation. So, Sir Abraham and his lady, now the speech was finished, 
followed their example of retirement: and the captain newly blood- 
knotted his hunting-whip, con amore, not to say con spirito, overnight. 

Nobody will wonder to hear, that when the gallant representatives of 
army and navy called next morning at number seven, Mrs. Tracy and 
her son were "not at home:" and of course it would be far too Julian- 
like a proceeding, for true gentleman to think of forcing their company 
on the probably ensconced in-dwellers. Accordingly, tliey marched 
away, without having deigned to leave a card ; the captain taking on 
himself the duty of perambulating sentinel, while his father proceeded 
to the library as usual. Judge of the glad surprise, when, within ten 
minutes, our vindictive George perceived the admiral coming back again, 
full-sail, with the mother and son in tow, creeping amicably enough up 
the terrace. Sir Abraham had given her his arm, and precious Mr. Julian 
was a little in the rear : for the old folks were talking confidentially. 



204 THETWINS. t 

George St. Vincent, placing his whip in the well-known position of 
"Cane, a mystery," advanced to meet them; and, just after passing his 
father, with whom he exchanged a very comfortable glance, discovered 
that the heroic Julian, who had caught a glimpse of the ill-concealed 
weapon, was slinking quickly roun'd a corner to avoid him. It was 
certainly undignified to run, but the gallant captain did run, neverthe- 
less ; and soon caught the coward by the collar. 

Then, at arm's length, was the hunting-whip applied, full-swing ; up 
the terrace, and down the parade, and through High-street, and Smith- 
street, and Oxton-road, and aristocratical Pacton-square, and the well- 
thronged plebeian market-place ; lash, lash, lash, in furious and fast 
succession on the writhing roaring culprit; to the universal excoriation 
of Mr. Julian Tracy, and the amazement of an admiring and soon-col- 
lected crowd — the rank, beauty, and fashion — of Burleigh Singleton. 
Julian was strong indeed, and a coal-heaver in build, but conscience 
had unnerved him; and the coarse noisy bully always is a coward: 
therefore, it was a pleasant thing to see how easy came the captam's 
work to him — he had nothing to do but to lash, lash, lash, double-thonged, 
like a slave-driver : and, except that he made the caitiff move along, to 
be a spectacle to man and woman, up and down the town, he might as 
well, for any difficulty in the deed, have been employed in scarifying a 
gate-post. 

At last, thoroughly exhausted with having inflicted as much punish- 
ment as any three drummers at a soldier's whipping-match, and spying 
out his "tiger" in the throng, our gallant Avenging Childe tossed the 
heavy whip to the trim cockaded little man, that he might carry home 
that instrument of vengeance, deliberately wiped his wet mustachios, 
and giving Julian one last kick, let the fellow part in peace. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

HOW CHAELES FARED. 

Having thus found protectors for poor Emily, and disposed of her 
assailant to the entire satisfaction of all mankind, let us turn seawards, 
and take a look at Charles. 



HOW CHARLES FARED. . 205 

Now, "no earthly powrr,'* — as a certain ex-chancellor protested — 
shall induce me to do so mean a thing as to open Charles's letters, and 
spread them forth before the public gaze. Doubtless, they were all 
things tender, warm, and eloquent; doubtless, they were tinted rosy hue, 
with love's own blushes, and made glorious with the golden light of 
unaffected piety. I only read them myself in a reflected way, by look- 
ing into Emily's eyes ; and I saw, from their ever-changing radiance, 
how feelingly he told of his affections ; how fervently he poured out all 
his heart upon the page ; how evidently tears and kisses had made many 
words illegible ; how wise, sanguine, happy, and religious, was her own 
devoted Charles. 

Of the trivial incidents of voyaging, his letters said not much : though 
cheerful and agreeable in his floating prison, with the various exported 
marrying-maidens and transported civil ofRcers, who constitute the 
average bulk of Indian cargoes outward bound, Charles mixed but little 
in their society, seldom danced, seldom smoked, seldom took a hand at 
whist, or engaged in the conflicts of backgammon. Sharks, storms, 
water-spouts ; the meeting divers vessels, and exchanging post-bags; 
tar-barrelled Neptune of the line. Cape Town with its mountain and the 
Table-cloth, long-rolling seas ; and similar common-places, Charles did 
not think proper to enlarge upon : no more do I. Life is far too short 
for all such petty details : and, more pointedly, a wire-drawn book is 
the just abhorrence of a generous public. 

The letters came frequently: for Charles did little else all day but 
write to Emmy, so as always to be ready with a budget for the next 
piece of luck — a home-bound ship. He had many things to teach her 
yet, sweet student; and it was a beautiful sight to see how her mind 
expanded as an opening flower before the sun of tenderness and wisdom. 
Each letter, both in writing and in reading, was the child of many prayers : 
and even the loveliness of Emily grew more soft, more elevated, "as it 
had been the face of an angel," when feeding in solitary joy on those 
effusions of her lover's heart. 

Of course, he could not hear from her, until the overland mail might 
haply bring him letters at Madras : so that, as our Irish friends would 
say, with all her will to tell him of her love, "the reciprocity must 
needs be all on one side." But Emily did write too ; earnestly, happily : 
and poured her very heart out in those eloquent burning words. I dare 
say Charles will get the letter now within a day or two : for the roaring 
surf of Madras is on the horizon, almost within sight. 

18 



206 . THE TWINS. 

Nevertheless, before he gets there, and can read those letters — precious, 
precious manuscripts — it will be my painful duty, as a chronicler of 
(what might well be) truth, to put the reader in possession of one little 
hint, which seemed likeliest to wreck the happiness of these two children 
of affection. 

I am Emily's invisible friend: and as the dear girl ran to me or.3 
morning, with tears in her eyes, to ask me what T thought of a certiiiii 
mysterious paragraph, I need not scruple to lay it straight before the 
reader. 

At the end of a voluminous love-letter, which I really did not think 
of prying into, occurred the following postscript, evidently written at the 
last moment of haste. 

"Oh! my precious Emmy, I have just heard the most fearful rumour 
of ill that could possibly befall us: the captain of our ship — you will 
remember Captain Forbes, he knew you and the general well, he said — 
has just assured me that — that — ! I dare not, cannot write the awful 
words. Oh ! my own Emmy — Heaven grant you be my own ! — pray, 
pray, as I will night and day, that rumour be not true : for if it be, my 
love, both God and man forbid us ever to meet again ! How I wish I 
could explain it all, or that I had never heard so much, or never written 
it here, and told it you, though thus obscurely : for I can't destroy this 
letter now, the ships are just parting company, and there is no time to 
write another. Yet will I hope, love, against hope. Who knows? 
through God's good mercy, it may all be cleared up still. If not — if 
not — strive to forget for ever, your unhappy "Charles. 

"Perhaps — O, glorious thought! — Nurse Mackie may know better 
than the captain, after all ; and yet, he seems so positive : if he is right, 
there is nothing for us both but Wo! Wo! Wo!" 

Now, to say plain truth, when Emily showed me this, I looked very 
blank upon it. That Charles had heard some meddlesome report, which 
(if true) was to be an insuperable barrier to their future union, struck 
me at a glimpse. But I had not the heart to hint it to her ; and only 
encouraged hope — hope, in God's help, through the means of Mrs. 
Mackie and her papers. 

As for the poor girl herself, she asked me, in much humility, and 
with many sobs, if I did not fear that her Hindoo mystery was this : — 
she was the vilest of the vile, a Pariah, an outcast, whose very presence 
is contamination ! 



THE GENERAL'S RETURN. 207 

<• 
Beautiful, loving, heavenly-hearted creature ! so humble in the midst 

of her majestic loveliness ! how touching was the thought, that she thus 

readily acquiesced in any the deepest humiliation holy Providence had 

seen fit to send her ; and though the sentence would have crushed her 

happiness for ever, till the day of death, that she could still look up and 

say, "Be it to thine handmaid even as thou wilt." 

As I had no better method of explaining the matter, and as her infantine 
reminiscences and prejudices about caste were strong, I even let her 
think so, if she would : it was a far better alternative than my own sad 
thoughts about the business : and, however painful was the process, it 
was something consolatory to observe, that this voluntary humiliation 
mellowed and chastened her own character, subduing tropical fires, and 
tempering the virgin gold by meekness. 

Oh ! Charles, Charles, my poor fellow, " who have cast your all upon 
a die, and must abide the issue of the throw," I most fervently hope that 
gossiping Captain Forbes spoke falsely : it is a comfort to reflect that the 
world is often very liberal in attributing the honours of paternity to some 
who really do not deserve them. And if a rich old bachelor looks kindly 
on a foundling, is it not pure malice on that sole account of charity to 
hail him father? Besides — there's Nurse Mackie. — Speed to Madras, 
poor youth, and keep your courage up. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE GENERAL'S RETURN. 

In a most unwonted flow of animal spirits, and an entire affability 
which restored him at once to the rank of a communicative creature. 
General Tracy came back on Friday night. He had met with marvel- 
lous prosperity ; for Hancock's had been paying off" the prize-money ; 
and his own lion's share, as general, in the easy process of dethroning 
half a dozen diamond-hilted rajahs and nabobs, amounted to something 
like four lacs of rupees, nearly half a crore ! Such a flush of wealth, 
and he was rich already without it, exhilarated the bilious old gentle- 
man so strangely, that positive peonies were blooming in his cheeks; 
and, as if this was not miracle enough, he had brought his wife as a 



208 THE TWINS. 

present Maurice's ^Antiquities of India,'' gloriously bound, and had even 
been so superfluous as to purchase a new pair of double-barrelled pistols 
for Julian : the lad was a fine young fellow after all, and ought to be 
encouraged in snuffing out a candle ; as for Emily's petit cadeau, it was 
a fifty guinea set of cameos, the choicest in their way that Howell and 
James's had to show him. Moreover, he had sent a Bow-street officer 
to Oxford, to make inquiries after Charles : actually, good fortune had 
made him at once humanized and happy. 

So the chaise rattled up, and the general bounded out, and flew into 
the arms of his wondering wife, as Paris might have flown to Helen, or 
Leander to his heroine — the only feminine Hero, whom grammar 
recoo-nises. It was past eleven at night : therefore he did not think to 
ask for Julian ; no doubt the boy was gone to bed. 

Indeed, he had; and was tossing his wealed body, full of pains, and 
aches, and bruises, as softly as he could upon the feather-bed : he had 
need of poultices all over, and a quart of Friar's Balsam would have 
done him little good : after his well-merited thrashing, the flogged hound 
had slunk to his kennel, and locked himself sullenly in, without even 
speaking to his mother. Tobacco-fumes exuded from the key-hole, and 
I doubt not other creature-comforts lent the muddled man their aid. 

However, after the first rush of news to Mrs. Tracy, her lord, who had 
every moment been expecting the door to fly open, and Emily to fall into 
his arms — for strangely did they love each other — suddenly asked, 

"But, Where's Emmy all this time! she knows I'm here? — not got 
to bed, is she ? — knew I was coming ? — " 

"Oh! general, I'll tell you all about it to-morrow morning," 

" About what, madam ? Great God ! has any harm befallen the child ? 
Speak — speak, woman!" 

»])ear — dear — Oh! what shall I say?" sobbed the silly mother. 
" Emily — Emily, poor dear Julian — " 

"What the devil, ma'am, of Julian?" The general turned white as a 
sheet, and rang the bell, in singular calmness ; probably for a dram of 
brandy. Saunders answered it so instantly, that I rather suspect he was 
waiting just outside. 

The moment Mrs. Tracy saw the gray-headed butler, anticipating all 
that he might say, she brushed past him, and hurriedly ran up-stairs. 

"What's all this, Mr. Saunders? where 's Miss Warren?" And the 
poor old guardian seemed ready to faint at his reply : but he heard it 
out patiently. 



THE GENERAL'S RETURN. 209 

"I am very sorry to say, general, that Miss Emily has been forced 
to take refuge at Sir Abraham Tamworth's: but she's well, sir, and 
safe, sir; quite well and safe," the good man hastened to say, "only I'm 
afraid that Mr. Julian had been taking liberties with — " 

I dare not write the general's imprecation : then, as he clenched the 
arms of his easy-chaix', as with, the grasp of the dying, he asked, in a 
quick wild way — 

"But Avhat was it? — what happened?" 

"Nothing to fear, sir — nothing at all, general; — I am thankful to say, 
that all I saw, and all we all saw, was Miss Emily pulling at the bell- 
rope with blood upon her face, and Mr. Julian on the floor: but I took the 
young lady to Sir Abraham's immediately, general, at her own desire." 

The father arose sternly ; his first feeling was to kill Julian ; but the 
second, a far better one, predominated — he must go and see Emily 
at once. 

So, faintly leaning on the butler's arm, the poor old man (whom a 
moiety of ten minutes, with its crowding fears, had made to look some 
ten years older,) proceeded to the square, and knocked up Sir Abraham 
at midnight, and the admiral came down, half asleep, in dressing-gown 
and slippers, vexed at having been knocked up from his warm berth so 
uncomfortably : it put him sorely in remembrance of his hardships as 
a middy. 

"Kind neighbour, thank you, thank you ; where 's Emmy ? take me to 
my Emmy;" and the iron-hearted veteran wept like a driveller. 

Sir Abraham looked at him queerly : and then, in a cheerful, friendly 
way, replied — 

" Dear general, do not be so moved : the girl 's quite safe with us ; 
you '11 see her to-morrow morning. All 's right ; she was only frightened, 
and George has given the fellow a proper good licking : and the girl 's 
a-bed, you know ; and, eh? what?" — 

For the poor old man, like one bereaved, said, supplicatingly — 

"In mercy take me to her — precious child !" 

" My dear sir — pray consider — it 's impossible ; fine girl, you know ; — 
Lady Tamworth, too — can't be, can't be, you know, general." 

And the mystified Sir Abraham looked to Saunders for an explanation — 

"Was his master drunk?" 

" I must speak to her, neighbour ; I must, must, and will — dear, dear 
child : come up with me, sir, come ; do not trifle with a breaking heart, 
neighbour!" 

O 18* 



210 THE TWINS. 

There was a heart still in that hard-baked old East Indian. 

It was impossible to resist such an appeal : so the two elders crept up 
stairs, and knocked softly at her chamber-door. Clearly, the girl was 
asleep : she had sobbed herself to sleep ; the general had been looked 
for all day long, and she was worn with watching; he could hardly 
come at midnight; so the dear affectionate child had sobbed herself 
to sleep. 

"Allow me, Sir Abraham." And General Tracy whispered some- 
thing at the key-hole in a strange tongue. 

Not Aladdin's "open Sesame" could have been more magical. In a 
moment, roused up suddenly from sleep, and forgetting every thing but 
those tender recollections of gentle care in infancy, and kindness all 
through life, the child of nature startled out of bed, drew the bolt, and 
in beauteous disarray, fell into that old man's arms ! 

It was enough ; he had seen her eye to eye — she lived : and the white- 
haired veteran suffered himself to be led away directly from the land- 
ing, like a child, by his sympathizing neighbour. 

"My heart is lighter now. Sir Abraham: but I am a poor weak old 
man, and owe you an explanation for this outburst; some day — some 
day, not now. O, if you could guess how I have nursed that pretty 
babe when alone in distant lands ; how I have doated on her little win- 
ning ways, and been gladdened by the music of her prattle ; how I have 
exulted to behold her loveliness gradually expanding, as she was ever at 
my side, in peril as in peace, in camp as in quarters, in sickness as in 
health, still — still, the blessed angel of a bad man's life — a wicked, hard 
old man, kind neighbour — if you knew more — more, than for her sake 1 
dare tell you — and if you could conceive the love my Emmy bears for 
me, you would not think it strange — think it strange — " He could not 
say a syllable more ; and the admiral, with Mr. Saunders, too, uiio 
joined them in the study, looked very little able to console that poor old 
man. For they all had hearts, and trickling eyes to tell them. 

Then having arranged a shake-down for his master in Sir Abraham's 
study — for the guardian would not leave his dear one ever again — Saun- 
ders went home, purposing to attend with razors in the morning. 



INTERCALARY. 211 

CHAPTER XVIIl. 

INTERCALAEY. 

The Tamworths did not altogether live at Burleigh Singleton — it was 
far too petty a place for them; dullness all the year round (however 
pleasant for a month or so, as a holiday from toilsome pleasures) would 
never have done for Lady Tamworth and her daughters : but they reg- 
ularly took Prospect House for six weeks in the summer season, when 
tired of Portland Place, and Huntover, their fine estate in Cheshire : and 
so, from constant annual immigration, came as much to be regarded 
Burleighites, as swifts and swallows to be ranked as British birds. I 
only hint at this piece of information, for fear any should think it 
unlikely, that grandees of Sir Abraham's condition could exist for ever 
in a place where the day-before-yesterday's ' Time s^ is first intelligence. 

Moreover, as another interjectional touch, it is only due to my life- 
likenesses to record, that Mrs. Green's, although a terrace-house, and 
ranked as humble number seven, was, nevertheless, a tolerably spacious 
mansion, well suited for the dignity of a butler to repose in : for Mrs. 
Green had added an entire dwelling on the inland side, as, like most 
maritime inhabitants, she was thoroughly sick of the sea, and never 
cared to look at it, though living there still, from mere disinclination to 
stir : so, then, it was quite a double house, both spacious and convenient. 
As for the inglorious incident of Julian's latch-key, I should not wonder 
if many wide street-doors to many marble halls are conscious of simi- 
lar convenient fastenings, if gentlemen of Julian's nocturnal tastes hap- 
pen to be therein dwelling. Another little matter is worth one word. 
The house had been Mrs. Green's, a freehold, and was, therefore, now 
her heir's ; but the general, as an executor, remained there still, until 
his business was finished ; in fact, he took his year's liberty. 

He had returned from India rolling in gold ; for some great princess 
or other — I think they called her a Begum or a Glumdrum, or other such 
like Gulliverian appellative — had been singularly fond of him, and had 
loaded him in early life with favours — not only kisses, and so forth, but 
jewellery and gold pagodas. And lately, as we know, Puttymuddy- 
fudgepoor, with its radiating rajahs and nabobs, had proved a mine of 
wealth: for a crore is ten lacs, and a lac of rupees is any thing but a 



213 THE TWINS. 

lack of money — although rupees be money, and the " middle is distrib- 
uted;" in spite of logic, then, a lack means about twelve thousand 
pounds: and four of them, according to Cocker, some fifty thousand. 
It would appear then, that with the produce of the Begum's diamonds, 
converted into money long ago, and some of them as big as linnet's 
eggs — and not to take account of Mrs. Green's trifling pinch of the five 
Exchequer bills, all handed over at once to Emily — the General's pres- 
f nt fortune was exactly one hundred and twenty -three thousand pounds. 

Of course, he wasn't going to bury himself at Burleigh Singleton 
much longer ; and yet, for all that stout intention of houses and lands, 
and carriages and horses, in almost any other county or country, it is 
r.s true as any thing in this book, that he was a resident still, a lease- 
holder of Aunt Green's house, long after the denouement of this story; 
in many things an altered man, but still identical in one ; the unchange- 
able resolve (though never to be executed) of leaving Burleigh at far- 
thest by next Michaelmas. Most folks who talk much, do little; and 
taciturn as the general now is, and has been ever throughout life, it will 
surprise nobody who has learned from hard experience how silly and 
harmf'i.l a thing is secresy (exceptionables excepted), to find that he 
grew to be a garrulous old man, gossipping for ever of past, present, 
future, and, not least, about his deeds at Puttymuddyfudgepoor. 

General Tracy is by this time awake again ; if ever indeed he slept 
on that uncomfortable shakedown ; and, after Mr. Saunders and the 
razor-strop, has greeted brightly-beaming Emily with more than usual 
tenderness. Her account of the transaction made his very blood boil ; 
especially as her pretty pouting lips were lacerated cruelly inside : that 
rude blow on the mouth had almost driven the teeth through them. 
How confidingly she told her artless tale ; how gently did her fond pro- 
tector kiss that poor pale cheek ; and how sternly did he vow full venge- 
ance on the caitiff! Not even Emily's intercession could avail to turn 
his wrath aside. He could hardly help flying off at once to do some- 
thing dreadful ; but common courtesy to all the Tamworth family 
obliged him to defer for an hour all the terrible things he meant to do. 
So he began to bolt his breakfast fiercely as a cannibal, and saluted 
Lady Tamworth and her daughters with such savage looks, that the 
captain considerately suggested : 

"Here, general," (handing him a most formidable carving-knife,) 
"charge that boar's head, grinning defiance at us on the side-board; it 
will do you good to hew his brawny neck. My mother, I am sure, for 



JULIAN'S DEPARTURE. 213 

one, will thank you to do the honours there instead of me. Isn't it a 
comfort now, to know that I broke the handle of my hunting-whip across 
the fellow's back, and wore all the whip-cord into skeins. Come, I say, 
general, don't eat us all round; and pray have mercy on that poor, 
flogged, miserable sinner." 

This banter did him good, especially as he saw Emily smiling ; so he 
relaxed his knit brow, condescended to look less like Giant Blunderbore, 
soon became marvellous chatty, and ate up two French rolls, an egg, 
some anchovies, a round of toast, and a mighty slice of brawn ; these, 
washed down with a couple of cups of tea, soothed him into something 
like complacency. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

JULIAN'S DEPAETURE. 

Long before the general got home, still in exalted dudgeon (indeed 
soon after the general had left home over night), the bird had flown ; for 
the better part of valour suggested to our evil hero,- that it would be dis- 
creet to render himself a scarce commodity for a season ; and as soon 
as ever his mother had run up to his room-door to tell him of his dan- 
ger, when her lord was cross-questioning the butler, he resolved upon 
instant flight. Accordingly, though sore and stifi| he hurried up, dressed 
again, watched his father out, and tumbling over Mrs. Tracy, who was 
sobbing on the stairs, ran for one moment to the general's room ; there 
he seized a well-remembered cash-box, and instinctively possessed him- 
self of those new, neat, double-barrelled pistols: a bully never goes 
unax'med. These brief arrangements made, off he set, before his father 
could have time to return from Pacton Square. 

Therefore, when the general called, we need not marvel that he found 
him not ; no one but the foolish mother (so neglected of her son, yet still 
excusing him) stood by to meet his wrath. He would not waste it on 
her; so long as Julian was gone, his errand seemed accomplished; for 
all he came to do was to expel him from the house. So, as far as regarded 
Mrs. Tracy, her husband, wotting well how much she was to blame, 
merely commanded her to change her sleeping-room, and occupy Mr. 
Julian's in future. 



214 THE TWINS. 

The silly woman was even glad to do it ; and comforted herself from 
time to time with prying into her own boy's exemplary manuscripts, 
memoranda of moralities, and so forth ; with weeping, like Lady Con- 
stance, over his empty "unpuffed" clothes; with reading ever and anon 
his choice collection of standard works, among which ^Don Juan' and 
Mr. Thomas Paine were by far the most presentable ; and with tasting, 
till it grew to be a habit, his private store of spirituous liquors. Thus 
did she mourn many days for long-lost Julian. 

I am quite aware what became of him. The wretched youth, mad 
for Emily's love, and tortured by the tyranny of passion, had nothing 
else to live for or to die for. He accordingly took refuge in the hovel 
of a smuggler, an old friend of his, not many miles away, disguised 
himself in fisherman's costume, and bode his opportunity. 

Beauteous girl ! how often have I watched thee with straining eyes 
and aching heart, as thou wentest on thy summer's walk so oftentimes 
to Oxton, there to exercise thy bountiful benevolence in comforting the 
sick, gladdening the wretched, and lingering, with love's own look, in 
Charles's village school ; how often have I prayed, that guardian angels 
might be about thy path as about thy bed ! For the prowling tiger was 
on thy track, poor innocent one, and many, many times nothing but one 
of God's seeming accidents hath saved thee. Who was that strange 
man so often in the way? At one time a wounded Spanish legionist, 
with head bound up ; at another, an old beggar upon crutches ; at another, 
a floury miller with a donkey and a sack ; at another, a black looking 
man, in slouching sailor's hat and fishing-boots? 

Fair, pure creature ! thou hast often dropped a shilling in that beg- 
gar's hand, and pitied that poor maimed soldier; once, too, a huge gipsy 
woman would have had thee step aside, and hear thy fortunes. Heaven 
guarded thee then, sweet Emily; for both girl and lover though thou 
art; thou would'st not listen to the serpent's voice, however fair might 
be the promises. And Heaven guarded thee ever, bidding some one 
pass along the path just as the ruffian might have gagged thy smiling 
mouth, and hurried thee away amongst his fellows; and more than 
once, especially, those school children, bursting out of Charles's school 
at dusk, have unconsciously escorted thee in safety from the perils of that 
tiger on thy track. 



ENLIGHTENMENT. 215 

CHAPTER XX. 

ENLIGHTENMENT. 

The general could not now be kept in ignorance of Charles's expedi- 
tion ; in fact, he had found his heart, and began resolutely to use it. So, 
the very day on which he had lost Julian, he intended very eagerly to 
seek out Charles; for the Oxford search had failed, and no wonder. 
Now, though Emily had told, as we well know, to both mother and son 
her secret, the father was not likely to be any the wiser; for he now 
never spoke to his wife, and could not well speak to his son. However, 
one day, an hour after an overland letter, a very exhilarating one, dated 
Madras, whereof we shall hear anon, fair Emily, in the fullness of her 
heart, could not help saying, 

"Dearest sir, you are often thinking of poor lost Charles, I know ; and 
you are very anxious about him too, though nobody but myself, who am al- 
ways with you, can perceive it : what if you heard he was safe and well ?" 

"Have you heard any tidings of my poor boy, Emmy?" 

She looked up archly, and said, " Why not?" her beautiful eyes adding, 
as plainly as eyes could speak, " I love him, and you know it ; of course 
I have heard frequently from dear, dear Charles." 

But the guardian met her looks with a keen and chilling answer: 
"Why not! why not! Does he dare to write to you, and you to love 
him? Oh, that I had told them both a year ago ! But where is he now, 
child? Don't cry, I will not speak so angrily again, my Emmy." 

"I hardly dare to tell you, dearest sir: you have always been as a 
father to me, and I never knew any other ; but there are things I cannot 
explain to myself, and I was vary wretched; and so, kind guardian, 
Charles — Charles was so good — " 

"What has he done? — where has he gone?" hastily asked his father. 

" Oh, don't, don't be angry with us ; in a word, he is gone to Madras, 
to find out Nurse Mackie, and to tell me who I am." 

The poor old man, who had treasured up so long some mystery, 
probably a very diaphanous one, for Emily's own dear sake in the world's 
esteem, and from the long bad habit of reserve, fell back into his chair 
as if he had been shot ; but he did not faint, nor gasp, nor utter a sound ; 
he only looked at her so long and sorrowfully, that she ran to him, and 
covered his pale face with her own brown curls, kissing him, and wiping 
from his cheek her starting tears. 



216 THE TWINS. 

" Emmy, dear — I can tell you — and I — no, no, not now, not now ; if 

he comes back — then — then; poor children! Oh, the sin of secresy!" 

" But, dearest sir, do not be so sad ; Charles has happy news, he says." 

"Happy, child? Good Heaven! would it could be so!" 

"Indeed, indeed, a week ago he was as miserable as any could be, 

and so was I ; for he heard something terrible about me — I don't know 

what — but I feared 1 was a — Pariah ! However, now he is all joy, and 

coming home again as soon as possible." 

The general shook his head mournfully, as physicians do when hope 
is gone ; but still he looked perplexed and thoughtful, 

" You will show me the letters, dear, I dare say : but I do not com- 
mand you, Emmy ; do as you like." 

"Certainly, my own kindest guardian — all, all, and instantly." 
And flying up to her room, she returned with as much closely-written 
mauuscript as would have taken any but a lover's eye a full week to 
decipher. The general, not much given to literary matters, looked quite 
scared at such a prospect. 

" Wait, Emmy ; not all, not all ; show me the last." 
1 dare say Emily will forgive me if I get it set up legibly in print. 
May I, dear? 



CHAPTER XXI. 

CHAELES AT MADRAS. 

Luckily enough for all mankind in general, and our lovers in particu- 
lar, Charles's last letter was very unlike some that had preceded it; for 
instead of the usual "Oh, my love" 's, "sweet, sweet eyes," " darling "'s, 
and all manner of such chicken-hearted nonsense, it was positively 
sensible, rational, not to say utilitarian : though I must acknowledge that 
here and there it degenerates into the affectionate, or Stromboli-vein of 
letter-writing, at opening especially ; and really now and then I shall 
take leave to indicate omitted inflammations by a *. 

"Dearest, dearest Emmy, 

[and so forth, a very galaxy of stars to the bottom of this page ; enough 
to put the compositor out of his terrestrial senses.] 



(CHARLES AT MADRAS. 217 

"You see I have recovered my spirits, dearest, and am not now afraid 
to tell you how I love you. Oh, that detestable Captain Forbes ! let him 
not cross my path, gossiping blockhead! on pain of carrying about 'til 
deth,' in the middle of his face, a nose two inches longer. I heartily 
wish I had never listened for an instant to such vile insinuations ; and 
when I look at this red right hand of mine, that dared to pen the trash 
in that black postscript, I look at it as Cranmer did, and (but that it is 
yours, Emmy, not mine), could wish it burnt. But no fears now, my 
girl, huzza, huzza ! I believe every one about me thinks me daft ; and 
so I am for very joy fulness; notwithstanding, let me be didactic, or you 
will say so too. I really will endeavour to rein in, and go along in the 
regular hackney trot, that you may partly comprehend me. Well, then, 
here goes ; try your paces, Dobbin. 

"On the morning of Sunday, April 11th, 1842, the good ship Elphin- 
ston — (that's the way to begin, I suppose, as per ledger, log-book, and 
midshipman's epistles to mamma) — in fact, dear, we cast anchor just 
outside a furious wall of surf, which makes Madras a very formidable 
place for landing ; and every one who dares to do so certain of a water- 
ing. There lay the city, most invitingly to storm-tost tars, with its white 
palaces, green groves, and yellow belt of sand, blue hills in the distance, 
and all else coleur de rose. But — but, Emmy, there was no getting at 
this paradise, except by struggling through a couple of miles of raging 
foam, that would have made mince-meat of the Spanish Armada, and 
have smashed Sir William Elphinston to pieces. How, then, did we 
manage to survive it? for, thank God always, here I am to tell the 
tale. Listen, Emmy dear, and I will try not to be tedious. 

" We were bundled out of the rolling ship into some huge flat-bottomed 
boats, like coal-barges, and even so, were grated and ground several times 
by the churning waves on the ragged reefs beneath us : and, just as I 
was enjoying the see-saw, and trying to comfort two poor drenched 
women-kind who were terribly afraid of sharks, a huge, cream-coloured 
breaker came bustling alongside of us, and roaring out 'Charles Tracy,' 
gobbled me up bodily. Well, dearest, it wasn't the first time I had 
floundered in the waters [noble Charles ! noble Charles ! he had long 
forgiven Julian] ; so I was battling on as well as I could, with a stout 
heart and a steady arm, when — don't be afraid — a Catamaran caught 
me ! If you haven't fainted (bless those pretty eyes of your's, my 
Emmy!) read on; and you will find that this alarming sort of animal 
is neither an albatross nor an alligator, but simply — a life-boat with a 

19 



218 THE TWINS. 

Triton in the stern. Yes, God's messenger of life to me and happiness 
to you, my girl, came in the shape of a kindly, chattering, blue-skinned, 
human creature, who dragged me out of the surf, landed me safely, and, 
I need not say, got paid with more than hearty thanks. So, I scuffled 
to the custom-house to look after my traps and fellow-passengers, like a 
dripping merman. 

" ' Who is that miserable old woman, bothering every body V asked I 
of a very civil searcher, profuse in his salaams. 

'"Oh, Sahib, you will know for yourself, presently: she's always 
hanging about here, to get news of somebody in England, I believe — 
and to try to find a charitable captain who will take her all the way for 
nothing : rather too much of a good thing, you know, Sahib.' 

[We really cannot undertake to scribble broken English: so we will 
translate any thing that may mysteriously have been chatted by havil- 
dars, and coolies, and all manner of strange names.] 

" ' Poor old soul — she looks very wretched : what 's her name V asked 
I, carelessly. 

" ' Oh, I never troubled to inquire. Sahib : I believe she was an old ser- 
vant left behind as lumber, and she pesters every one, day by day, about 
some 'bonnie bonnie bairn." 

"In a moment, Emmy, I had seized on dear nurse Mackie! 

"Very old, very deaf, very infirm — she fancied I was driving her 
away, as ma'ny others might have done ; and, with a truly piteous face, 
pleaded — 

"'Gude sir, have mercy on a puir auld soul — and let her ask for her 
sweet young mistress, only once, sir — only once more.' 

"'Emily Warren?' said I. 

Her wrinkled face brightened over as with glory — and she answered — 

"'Bless the mouth that spake it, and these ears that hear her name! 
yes — yes — yes — they call her so; where is she? how is she? have you 
seen her? is she yet alive?' 

"Leading away the aflTectionate old soul from the crowd that was 
collecting round us, I left orders about luggage as a traveller should, 
and then told her all I knew : and I know you pretty well, I think, 
my Emmy. 

" Her joy was like a mad woman's : the dear old Hecate pranced, and 
danced, and sung, and shouted like nothing but a mother when she finds 
her long-lost child : not that she 's your mother, Emmy dear. No — no 
— matters are better than that : all she vouchsafes, though, to tell me is. 



REVELATIONS. 219 

tliat you are a lady born and bred, and — for I cannot find the words to 
inform your pure mind clearer — that 'you are not what he thinks you.'" 
[Here followeth another twinkling universe of stars; 

and thereafter our cavalier condescendeth again to matters of fact.] 

"Nurse Mackie of course comes back with me next packet; this let- 
ter goes by the overland mail more quickly than we can ; gladly would 
I go too, but the old woman, whose life is essential to your rights, would 
die of fatigue by the way ; as it is, I am obliged to coddle her, and feed 
her, and ptisan her, like a sick baby, bless her dear old heart that loves 
my darling Emmy! She has a pack of papers with hei', which she will 
not open, till the general is by her side: if she unfortunately dies before 
we can return, I am to have them, and all will be right. But the old 
soul is so afraid of being left behind (as you thr(v away the orange- 
peel after you have squeezed it), that she will not tell me a word about 
them yet; so, I only gather what I can from her cautious garrulity, 
hints about a Begum and a captain, and the Stuarts, and a Putty-what- 
d'ye-call-it. And it is all in document, as well as viva-voce (this means 
'gossip,' dear). So now you may be expecting us, as soon as ever we 
can get to you. Tell the general all this, and give him my best love, 
next after your's Emmy ; for he is my father still, and my very heart 
yearns after him : O, that he were kinder with me as I see he is with 
you, dear, and more open with us all ! Also, kiss, if she will let you, 
my mother for me, and I hope you will have hinted to her long ago, that 
I am only playing truant. How is poor — poor Julian? he will under- 
stand me, if you tell him I forgive him, and will never say one word 
about our little tiff. And now dearest Emmy — " 

[The remainder of this letter must, believe me, be as starry as before.] 



CHAPTER XXII. 

REVELATIONS. 



Genekal Tracy gave a long-drawn sigh : and tears — tears of true 
affection — stood in those most fish-like eyes, as he mournfully said, 
"Bless him, bless dear Charles, almost as much as you, my own sweet 



220 THE TWINS. 

Emmy. Heaven send it be true — for Heaven can work miracles. But 
without a miracle, Emily, in sober sadness I declare it, you must forget 
— your brother Charles, my daughter T^ 

Emily fell flat upon her face, so cold, so white, that he believed 
her dead. 

Oh ! that he had never — never said that word : or better still, poor 
father, that you had never kept the dreadful secret from them. The 
adultery, indeed, was sin ; but years of ill-concealings have multiplied 
its punishment. Wretched father — wretched children! that must bear 
an erring father's curse. 

Oh ! that Jeanie Mackie may have reasons, proofs ; and be not an 
impostor after all, dressing up a tale that over-sanguine Charles may 
bring her back again to Scotland. Well — well ! I am full of sadness 
and perplexities : but we shall hear it out anon. Heaven help them ! 

Emily was taken very ill, and had a long fit of sickness. Day and 
night — night and day, did her poor wasting anxious father watch by her 
bed-side, gentle as the gentlest nurse — tender as the tenderest of moth- 
ers. And, indeed, the Lord of Life and Wisdom was gracious to them 
both; raising up the poor weak child again; and teaching that old man, 
through this daughter of his shame and sin in youth, that religion is a 
cure for all things. Ay, "the blessed angel of a bad man's life," 
indeed — indeed was she; and he humbly knelt, as little children kneel, 
that hard and dried old man ; and his eyes caught the ray of Heaven's 
mercy, looking up in joy to read forgiveness ; and his heart was bathed 
in penitence — the rock flowed out amain ; and his mind was quickened 
into faith — he lived, he breathed "a new-born babe," that poor and bad 
old man, given to the prayers of his own daughter! 

All this while, Mrs. Tracy, thrown upon her own resources, has been 
continually tasting dear Julian's store, and finding out excuses for his 
trivial peccadilloes. And when, from the recesses of his desk, she had 
routed out (in company with sundry more, rather contrasting with a 
mother's pure advice) a few of her own letters, which had not yet been 
destroyed, she would doat by the hour on these proofs of his affection. 
And then, her spirits were so low ; and his choice smuggled Hollands 
so requisite to screw them up to par again ; and no sooner had they ral- 
lied, than they would once more begin to droop ; so she cried a good deal, 
and kept her bed; and very often did not remember exactly, whether 
she was lying down there, or figuring on the Esplanade with Julian, and 
— all that sort of thing : accordingly, it is not to be wondered at if, in 



REVELATIONS. 221 

Aunt Green's double-house, the general and Emily saw very little of 
her, and during all this illness, had almost forgotten her existence. 
Nevertheless, she was alive still, and as vast as ever — tliough a course 
of strong waters had shattered her nerves considerably ; even more so, 
than her real mother's grief at Julian's protracted absence. 

Never had he been heard of since he left, hard heart; though he 
might have guessed a mother's sorrow, and was not far away, and often 
lingered near the house in strange disguises. It would have been easy 
for him, in some clever way or other, latch-key and all, to have gained 
access to her, and comforted her, and given her some real proof, that all 
the love she had shed on him had not been utterly thrown away ; but he 
didn't — he didn't ; and I know not of a darker trait in Julian's whole 
career; he was insensible to love — a mother's love. 

For love is the weapon which Omnipotence reserved to conquer rebel 
man, when all the rest had failed. Reason he parries ; Fear he answers 
blow to blow ; future interest he meets with present pleasure ; but Love, 
that sun against whose melting beams the Winter cannot stand, that soft- 
subduing slumber which wrestles down the giant, there is not one human 
creature in a million — not a thousand men in all earth's huge quintillion, 
whose clay-heart is hardened against love. 

Yet was Julian one of those select ones ; an awful instance of that 
possible, that actual, though happily that scarcest of all characters, a man, 

"Black, with no virtue, and a thousand crimes." 

The amiable villain — one whose, generosity redeems his guilt, whose 
kindliness outweighs his folly, or whose beauty charms the eye to over- 
look his baseness — this too common hero is an object, an example fraught 
with perilous interest. Charles Duval, the polite; Paul Clifford, the 
handsome ; Richard Turpin, brave and true ; Jack Sheppard, no ignoble 
mind and loving still his mother ; these, and such as these, with Schil- 
ler's ^ Rollers^ and the like, are dangerous to gaze on, as Germany, if 
not England too, remembers well. But, not more true to life, though 
far less common to be met with, is Julian's incorrigible mind : one, in 
whose life are no white days ; one, on whose heart are no bright spots ; 
when Heaven's pity spoke to him, he ridiculed ; as, when His threaten- 
ings thundered, he defied. Of this world only, and tending to a worse, 
appetite was all he lived for : and the core of appetite is iron selfishness. 

The filched cash-box proved to be too well-filled for him to trouble 
himself with thinking of his mother yet awhile: and his smuggling 

19* 



222 THE TWINS. 

acquaintances, a rough-featured, blasphemous crew, set him as their 
chief, so long as he swore loudest, drank deepest, and had money at com- 
mand. He hid the money, that they should not secretly steal from him 
that to which he owed his bad supremacy ; and his double-baiTels, 
shotted to the muzzle, were far too formidable for any hope of getting 
at it by open brute force. Nevertheless, they were " fine high-spirited " 
fellows those, bold, dark men, of Julian's own kidney; who toasted in 
their cups each other's crimes, and the ghost or two that ought to have 
been haunting them. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

CONYALESCENCE. 

Veey slowly did Emily recover, for the blow had been more than she 
could bear : nothing but religion gave her any chance at all : and the 
phials, blisterings, bleedings, would have been in vain, in vain — she must 
have died long ago — had it not been for the remembrance of God's love, 
resignation to His will, and trust in the wisdom of his Providence. But 
these specific remedies gradually brought her round, while the kind- 
eyed doctors praised their own prescriptions : and after many rallyings 
and relapses, delirious ramblings, and intervals of hallowed Christian 
peace, the eye of Love's meek martyr brightened up once more, and 
health flushed again upon her cheek. 

She recovered, God be praised ! for her death would have been poor 
Charles's too ; and the same grave that yawned for her and him would 
have closed upon their father also. Even as it was, when she arosr" 
from off the weary bed of sickness, it was to be a nurse herself, and 
watch beside that patient, weak old man. He could not bear her out of 
his sight all the fever through ; but eagerly would listen to her hymns 
and prayers, joining in them faintly like a dying saint. With the sad- 
dening secret, which had so long pressed upon his mind, he seemed to 
have thrown off his old nature, as a cast skin : and now he was all 
frankness for reserve, all piety for profaneness, all peacefulness for 
blusterings and wrath. 

He remembered then poor Julian and his mother : taking blame to 
himself, justly, deeply, for neglected duties, chilling lack of sympathy, 



CONVALESCENCE. 223 

and that dull domestic sin, that still continued evil of unnatural omissions 
— stern reserve. And he would gladly have seen Julian by his bedside, 
to have freely forgiven the lad, and welcomed him home again, and 
begun once more, in openness and charity, all things fair and new : but 
Julian was not to be found, though rewards were oflercd, and placards 
posted up, and emissaries from the Detective Police-force sought him far 
and wide. Alas! the bold bad man had heard with scorn of his father's 
penitence, and knew that be would gladly have received him ; — but what 
cared he for kindnesses or pardons? He only lived to waylay Emily. 

As for Mrs. Tracy, she was seldom in a state to appear ; but one day 
she managed to refrain a little, and came to see her husband, almost 
sober. I was, authorially speaking, behind the door, and saw and 
heard as follows: 

The old man, worn and emaciate, was weakly sitting up in bed, and 
Emma by his side, with the Bible in her lap : she casually shut it as the 
mother entered. 

" Well, Miss Warren, there 's a time for all things ; but this is neither 
morning, noon, nor night: nor Sunday either, nor holiday, that I know 
of; it 's eleven o'clock on Tuesday, Miss — and I think you might as 
well leave the general at peace, without troubling him for ever with 
your prayer-books and your Bibles." 

"Jane, my dear, I requested it of Emily; come and sit by me, and 
take my hand, wife." 

" Thank you, sir, you are very obliging : not while that young Avqman 
is in the room. — You ought to be ashamed of yourself. General Tracy. 

Poor Emmy ran away to weep. It seems that, in her delirium, she 
had spoken many things, and the servants blabbed them out to Mrs. 
Tracy. 

"Ah, my poor wife, indeed I am: both ashamed and sorry — heartily 
sorry. But God forgives me, Jenny, and I hope that you will too." 

" Upon, my word, general, you carry it off with a high hand : and, not 
content, sir, with insulting me in my own home by bringing here your 
other women's children, you have expelled poor dear, dear Julian." 

"Jane, if you will remember, he ran away himself; and you know 
that now I gladly would receive him : we are all prodigal sons together, 
and if God can bear with us, Jane, we ought to look kindly on each 
other." 

"Ha! that's always the way with old sinners like you — canting hypo- 
crites! Be a man, General Tracy, if you can, and talk sense. I never 



224 THE TWINS. 

did any harm or sin in all my life yet, and don't intend to : and my poor 
boy Julian 's well enough, if they 'd only let him alone ; but nobody 
understands his heart but me. Good boy, I'm sure there's virtue 
enough left in him, if he loves his mother." — If he loves his mother. 

"Jane, dear, I sent for you to kiss you; for I could not die in peace, 
nor live in peace (whichever God may please), without your pardon, 
Jane, for a thousand unkindnesses — but, especially for the sin that gave 
me Emily. Forgive me this, my wife." 

"Never, sir!" rejoined that miserable mind ; and fancied that she was 
acting virtuously. She thrust aside the kindly proffered hand ; scowled 
at him with darkened brow ; drew up her commanding height ; and, 
calling Mrs. Siddons to remembrance, brushed away in the indignant 
attitude of a tragedy queen. 

Emmy ran again to her father, and the vain bad mother to her bottle ; 
we must leave them to their various avocations. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

CHARLES DELATED. 

Few things could well be more unlikely than that Emily should hear 
of Charles again before she saw him : for, having left Madras as speedily 
as might be, now that his mission was so easily, yet so naturally, accom- 
plished — having po.sted, as we know, his overland letter — and having got 
on board the fast-sailing ship Samarang, Captain Trueman, Charles, in 
the probable course of things, if he wrote at all, must have been his own 
postman. But the Fates — (our Christianity can afford to wink now and 
then at Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos ; for, at any rate, they are as 
reasonable creatures as Chance, Luck, and Accident,) — the Fates willed 
it otherwise : and, accordingly, it is in my power to lay before the reader 
another genuine lucubration of Charles Tracy. 

A change had come over the spirit of their dream, those youthful 
lovers : and agonizing doubt must rack their hearts, threatening to rend 
them both asunder. It is evident to me that Charles's letter (which 
Emily showed to me with a melancholy face) was on principle less 
warm, less dottable with stars, and more conversant with things of this 



CHARLES DELAYED. ^>>r. 

world ; high, firm, honourable principle ; intending very gently, very 

gradually, to wean her from him, if he could ; for his faith in Jeanie 

Mackie had been shaken, and — but let us hear him tell us of it all 

himself. 

" L E. M . Samarang. St. Helena. 

" You will wonder, my dear Emily, to hear again before you see me : 
but I am glad of this providential opportunity, as it may serve to prepare 
us both. Naturally enough you will ask, why Charles cannot accom- 
pany this letter? I will tell you, dear, in one word — Mrs. Mackie is 
now lying very ill on shore ; and, as far as our poor ship is concerned, 
you shall hear about it all anon. Several of the passengers, who were 
in a hurry to get home, have left us, and gone in the packet-boat that 
takes you thjs letter: gladly, as you know, would I have accompanied 
them, for I long to see you, poor dear girl ; but it was impossible to leave 
the old woman, upon whom alone, under God, our hopes of earthly hap- 
piness depend : if, alas ! we still can dream about such hopes. 

"Oh, Emily — 1 heartily wish that, having finished my embassage by 
that instantaneous finding of the old Scotch nurse, I had never been so 
superfluous as to have left those letters of introduction, v/herewith you 
kindly supplied me, in an innocent wish to help our cause. But I felt 
solitary too, waiting at Madras for the next ship to England ; and in my 
folly, forgetful of the single aim with which I had come, Jeanie Mackie, 
to wit, I thought I might as well use my present opportunities, and see 
what I could of the place and its inhabitants. 

" With that view, I left my letters at Government House, at Mr. Clark- 
son's, Colonel Bunting's, Mrs. Castleton's, and elsewhere, according to 
direction ; and immediately found answer in a crowd of invitations. 1 
need not vex you nor myself, Emmy, writing as I do with a heavy, 
heavy heart, by describing gayeties in which I felt no pleasure, even 
when amongst them, for my Emmy was not there : splendour, prodi- 
gality, and red-hot rooms, only made endurable by perpetually fanning 
punkahs : pompous counsellors, authorities, and other men in office, and 
a glut of military uniforms : vulgar wealth, transparent match-making, 
and predominating dullness: along with some few of the charities and 
kindnesses of life (Mrs. Bunting, in particular, is an amiable, motherly, 
good-hearted woman), all these you will readily fancy for yourself. 

"My trouble is deeper than any thing so slight as the common satia- 
tions of enmd : for I have heard in these circles in which your — my— • 
the general, I mean, chiefly mixed, so much of that ill-rumour that it 
P 



226 THE TWINS. 

cannot all be false : they knew it all, and were certain of it all, too well, 
Emily, dear. And I have been pestering Nurse Mackie night and day ; 
but the old woman is so afraid of being left behind any where, or thrown 
overboard, or dropped upon some desert rock, that she is quite cross, and 
won't say a single word in answer, even when I tell her all these terrible 
talcs. Her resolution is, not to reveal one syllable more, until she sets 
foot on England ; and several people at Madras annoyed me exceedingly 
by saying, that this kind of thing is an old trick with people who wish 
to be sent home again. She has hidden away her papers somewhere ; 
not that I was going to steal them : but it shows how little trust she puts 
in any thing, or any one, except the keeping of her own secret. How- 
ever, she does adhere obstinately, and hopefully for us, to her original 
hint, 'you are not what he thinks you ;' although she will not condescend 
to any single proof, or explanation, against the mighty mass of evidence, 
which probabilities, and common rumour, and the general's own belief, 
have heaped together. When I call you Emmy, too — the old soul, in 
her broad Scotch way, always corrects me, and invokes a blessing upon 
'A-amy:' so there is a mystery somewhere: at least, I fervently hope 
there is: and, if the old woman has been playing us false, let us resign 
ourselves to God, my girl ; for our fate will be that matters are as people 
Ray they are — and then my old black postscript ends too truly witli a 
wo, wo, wo — ! 

"But I must shake ofl all this lethargy of gloom, dearest, dearest 
girl — how can I dare to call you so? Let me, therefore, rush for com- 
fort into other thoughts; and tell you at once of the fearful dangers we 
have now mercifully escaped ; for the Samarang lies like a log in tliis 
friendly port, dismasted, and next to a wreck. 

"I proceed to show you about it; perhaps I shall be tedious — but 1 
do it as a little rest, my own soul's love, from anxious, earnest, heart- 
distracting prayers continually, continually, that the sorrow which I 
spoke of be not true. Sometimes, a light breaks in, and I rejoice in the 
most sanguine hope : at others, gloom — 

" But a truce to all this, I say. Here shall follow didactically the 
cause why the good ship Samarang is not by this time in the Docks. 

" We were lying somewhere about the tropical belt, Capricorn you 

know, (O, those tender lessons in geography, my Emmy!) quite 

becalmed; the sea like glass, and the sky like brass, and the air in a 

most stagnant heat : our good ship motionless, dead in a dead blue sea 

it was 

' Idl? as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.' 



CHARLES DELAYED. 227 

"The sails were hanging loosely in the shrouds: every one set, from 
sky-scraper to stud-sail, in hopes to catch a breath of wind. My fellow- 
passengers and the crew, almost melted, were lying about, as weak as 
parboiled eels: it was high-noon, all things silent and subdued by that 
intolerable blaze ; for the vertical sun, over our multiplied awnings and 
umbrellas, burnt us up, fierce as a furnace. 

" I was leaning over the gangway, looking wistfully at the cool, clear, 
deep sea, wherefrom the sailors were trying to persuade a shark to come 
on board us, when, all at once, in the south-east quarter, I noticed a little 
round black cloud, thrown up from the horizon like a cricket-ball. As 
any thing is attractive in such sameness as perpetual sea and sky, my 
discovery was soon made known, and among the first to our captain. 

"Calling for his Dolland, and bidding his second lieutenant run quick 
to the cabin and look at the barometer, he viewed the little cloud in 
evident anxiety, and shook his head with a solemn air : more than one 
light-hearted woman thinking he was quizzing them. 

"Up came Lieutenant Joyce, looking as if he had seen a ghost in 
the cabin. 

' "'The mercury, sir, is falling just as rapidly as it would rise if you 
plunged it into boiling water: an inch a minute or so!" 

" Our captain saw the danger instantly, and, brave as Trueman is, I 
never saw a man look paler. 

"To drive all the passengers below, and pen them in with closed 
hatches and storm-shutters, (so hot, Emmy, that the black-hole of Cal- 
cutta must have been an ice-house to it : how the foolish people abused 
our wise skipper, and more than one pompous old Indian threatened him 
with an action for false imprisonment!) this huddling away was the first 
effort ; and simultaneously with it, the crew were all over the rigging, 
furling sails, hurriedly, hurriedly. 

"Meanwhile (for I was last on deck), that little cloud seemed whirling 
witliin itself, and many others gathered round it, all dancing about on the 
horizon, as if sheaves of mischief tossed about by devils: I don't wish 
to be poetical, Emmy, for my heart is very, very sad ; but if ever the 
powers of the air sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, they wore 
gathering in their harvest at that door. Underneath the skipping clouds, 
which came on quickly, leaping over each other, as when the wain in 
loaded by a score of hands, I noticed a sea approaching, such as Pha- 
raoh must have seen, when the wall of waters fell upon him; and pre- 
monitory winds came whistling by, and two or three sails were flapping 
in them still, and I was hurried down stairs after all the rest of us. 



228 



THE TWINS, 



" Then, on a sudden, it appeared not winds, nor waves, nor thunder, 
but as if the squadroned cavalry of heaven had charged across the seas, 
and crushed our battered ship beneath their horse-hoofs! We were 
flung down flat on our beam ends ; and the two or three unfurled sails, 
bursting with the noise of a cannon, were scattered miles away to lee- 
ward as if they had been paper. As for the poor fellows in the rigging, 
the spirit of the storm had already made them his: twenty of our men 
were swept away by that tornado. 

"Then there was hewing and cleaving on deck, the clatter of many 
axes and hatchets : for we were in imminent danger of being capsized, 
keel uppermost, and our only chance was to cut away the masts. 

"The muscles of courage were tried then, my Emmy, and the strength 
« hich religion gives a man. I felt sensibly held up by the Everlasting 
Arms: I could listen to the still small Voice in the midst of a crash 
which might have been the end of all things: though in darkness, God 
had given me light; though in uttermost peril, my peace was never 
calmer in our little village school. 

"And the billows were knocking at the poor ship's side like sledge 
hammers; and the lightnings fell around us scorchingly, with forked 
bolts, as arrows from the hand of a giant ; the thunders overhead, close 
overhead, crashing from a concave cloud that hung about us heavily — 
a dense, black, suffocating curtain — roared and raved as nothing earthly 
can, but thunder in the tropics; the rain was as a cataract, literally 
rushing in a mass : the winds appeared not winds, nor whirlwinds, but 
legions of emancipated demons shrieking horribly, and flapping their 
wide wings ; a flock of niglit-birds flying from the dawn ; and all else 
was darkness, confusion, rolling and rocking about, the screams of 
women, the» shouts of men, curses and prayers, agony, despair, and — 
peace, deep peace. 

"On a sudden, to our great astonishment, all was silent again, oppres- 
sively silent ; and, but for the swell upon the seas, all still. The tornado 
had rushed by : that troop of Tartar horse, having sacked the village, 
are departed, now in full retreat : the blackness and the fury are beheld 
on our lee, hastening across the broad Atlantic to Cuba or Jamaica: and 
behold, a tranquil temperate sky, a kindly rolling sea, a favouring breeze, 
and — not a sail, but some slight jury-rig, to catch it. 

"Many days we drifted like a log upon the wave; provisions running 
short, and water — water under tropical suns — scantily dealt out in tea- 
cups. Then, poor old Mackie's health gave way; and I dreaded for her 



TRIALS. 229 

death : one living witness is worth a cart-load of cold documents. So I 
nursed and watched her constantly : till the foolish folks on board began 
to say I was her son : ah ! me, for your sake I wish it had been so. 

"And at length, just as some among the sailors were hinting at a mutiny 
for spirits, and our last case of Gamble's meat was opened for the sick, 
our look-out on the jury-mast gave the welcome note of 'Land!' and 
soon, to us on deck, the heights of St. Helena rose above the sea. 
Towed in by friendly aid, here we are, then, precious Emily, refitting : 
and, as it must be a week yet before we can be ready, I have taken my 
old woman to a lodging upon land, and rejoice (what have I to do with 
joy?) to see her speedily recovering," 

The remainder of Charles's long letter is so stupid, so gloomy, so 
loving, and so little to the purpose, that I take an editor's privilege, and 
omit it altogether. Of course he was coming home again, as soon as 
the Samarang and Jeanie Mackie would permit. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

TRLVLS. 

The general recovered ; as slowly, indeed, as Emily had, but it is 
gratifying to add, as surely. And now that loving couple might be 
seen, weakly creeping out together, when the day was finest: tottering 
white December leaning on a sickly fragile May. There were no con- 
cealments now between them, no reservings, and heart-stricken Emily 
heard from her repentant father's lips the story of her birth : she was, 
he said, his own daughter by a native princess, the Begum Dowlia 
Burruckjutli. 

A bitter — bitter truth was that : the destruction of all her hopes, pleas- 
ures, and affections. It had now become to her a sin to love that dearest 
one of all things lovely on this earth : duty, paramount and stern, com- 
manded her, without a shadow of reprieve, to execute on herself imme- 
diately the terrible sentence of banishing her own betrothed : nay, more, 
she must forget him, erase his precious image from her heart, and never, 
never see that brother more. And Charles must feel the same, and do 

20 



230 THE TWINS. 

the like; oh! sorrow, passing words! and their two commingled souls 
must be violently wrenched apart; for such love in them were crime. 

Dear children of affection — it is a dreadful lesson this for both of you; 
but most wise, most needful — or the hand that guideth all things, never 
would have sent it. Know ye not for comfort, that ye are of those to 
whom all things work together for good ? Know ye not for counsel, that 
the excess of love is an idolatry that must be blighted? It is well, chil- 
dren, it is well, that ye should thus carry your wounded hearts for balm 
to the altar of God ; it is well that ye should bow in meekness to His will, 
in readiness to His wisdom. Ye are learning the lesson speedily, as docile 
children should ; and be assured of high reward from the Teacher who hath 
set it you. Poor Charles ! white and wan, thy cheek is grown transparent 
with anxiety, and thy blue eye dim with hope deferred : poor Emmy, sick 
and weak, thou weariest Heaven with thy prayers, and waterest thy 
couch with thy tears. Yet, a little while ; this discipline is good : storm 
and wind, frost and rushing rains, are as needful to the forest-tree as 
sun and gentle shower; the root is strengthening, and its fibres spreading 
out: and loving still each other with the best of human love, ye justly 
now have found out how to anchor all your strongest hopes, and deepest 
thoughts, on Him who made you for himself. Who knoweth? wisely 
acquiescing in His will, humbly trusting to His mercy, and bringing 
the holocaust of your inflamed affections as an offering of duty to your 
God — who knoweth? Cannot He interpose? will He not befriend you? 
For His arm is power, and His heart is love. 

Days rolled on in dull monotony, and grew to weeks more slowly than 
before ; earthly hopes had been levelled with the dust ; life had forgotten 
to be joyous: there was, indeed, the calm, the peace, the resignation, the 
heavenly ante-past, and the soul-entrancing prayer; but human life to 
Emily was flat, wearisome, and void ; she felt like a nun, immolated as 
to this world : even as Charles, too, had resolved to be an anchorite, a 
stern, hard, mortified man, who once had feelings and affections. The 
reaction in both those fond young hearts had even overstept the golden 
mean : and Mercy interposed to make all right, and to bless them in 
each other once again. 

Only look at this billet-doux from Charles, just come in, and dated 
Plymouth : 

"Huzzah — for Emily and England: huzzah for the land of freedom! 
no secrets now — dear, dear old Jeanie Mackie has given me proofs posi- 



JULIAN. 231 

tive : all I have to wish is that she could move : but she is very ill ; so, 
as we touched here on the voyage up channel, I landed her and myself, 
thinking to kiss, within a day, my darling Emmy. But I cannot get her 
out of bed this morning, and dare not leave her : though an hour's delay 
seems almost insupportable. If I possibly can manage it, I will bring 
the dear old faithful creature, wrapped in blankets, by chaise to-morrow. 
Tell my father all this: and say to him — he will understand, perhaps, 
though you may not, my blessed girl — say to him, that 'he is mistaken, 
and all are mistaken — you are not what they think you.' A thousand 
kisses. Expect, then, on bright to-morrow to see your happy, happy 

"Charles." 
"P.S. Hip! hip! hip!— huzzah!" 

Dearest Emily had taken up the note with fears and trembling: she 
laid it down, as they that reap in joy ; and I never in my life saw any 
thing so beautiful as her eyes at that glad minute ; the smile through 
the tear, the light through the gloom, the verdure of high summer 
springing through the Alpine snows, the mild and lustrous moon 
emerging from a baffled thunder-cloud. 

And, although the general mournfully shook his head, distrustfully 
and despondingly ; though he only uttered, "Poor children — dear chil- 
dren — would to Heaven that it could be so ;" — and he, for one, was evi- 
dently innoculated, as before, with all the old thoughts of gloom, sadness, 
and anxiety ; — still Emily hoped — for Charles hoped — and Jeanie Mackie 
was so certain. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

JULIAN. 

Next day, a fine summer afternoon, when our feeble convalescents 
had gone out together, they found the fresh air so invigorating, and 
themselves so much stronger, that they prolonged their walk half-way 
to Oxton. The pasture-meadows, rich and rank, were alive with flocks 
and herds ; the blue sea lazily beat time, as, ticking out the seconds, it 
melodiously broke upon the sleeping shore ; the darkly-flowing Mullet 
swept sounding to the sea between its tortuous banks ; and upon that 



232 THE TWINS. 

old high foot-path skirting the stream, now shady with hazels, and now 
flowery with meadow-sweet, crept our chastened pair. 

Just as they were nearing a short angle in the river, the spot where 
Charles had been preserved, they noticed for the first time a rough-look, 
ing fisherman, who, unseen, had tracked their steps some hundred yards ; 
he had a tarpaulin over his shoulder, very unnecessarily, as it would 
seem, on so fine and warm a day ; and a slouching sou'-wester, worn 
askew, flapped across the strange man's face. 

He came on quickly, though cautiously, looking right and left; and 
Emily trembled on her guardian's feeble arm. Yes — she is right ; the 
fisherman approaches — she detects him through it all : and now he 
scorns disguise; flinging off his cap and the tarpaulin, stands before 
them — Julian ! 

"So, sir — you tremble now, do you, gallant general: give me the 
girl." And he levelled at his father one of those double-barrelled 
pistols, full-cock. 

"Julian, my son, I forgive you, Julian; take my hand, boy." 

" What — coward ? now you can cringe, and fawn, eh ? back with you ! 
— the girl, I say." For poor Emily, wild with fear, was clinging to 
that weak old man. 

Julian levelled again ; indeed, indeed it was only as a threat ; but his 
hand shook with passion — the weapon was full-cock, hair-triggered — 
shotted heavily as always — hark, hark ! — And his father fell upon the 
turf, covered with blood! 

When a wicked man tampers with unintended crime, even accident 
falls out against him. Many a one has richly merited death for many 
other sins, than that isolated, haply accidental one which he has 
hanged for. 

Julian, horror-stricken, pale and trembling, flew instinctively to help 
his father: but Emily has circled him already with her arms; and 
listen, Julian — your dying father speaks to you. 

"Boy, I forgive — I forgive: but — Emily, no, no, cannot, cannot be — 
Julian — she — she is your sister !" and the old man swooned away, from 
loss of blood and the excitement of that awful scene. 

Not a word in reply said that poor sinner, maddened with his life-long 
crimes, the fratricide in will, the parricide in deed, and all for — a sister. 
But growing whiter as he stood, a marble man with bristling hair, he 
slowly drew the other pistol from his pocket, put the muzzle to his mouth, 
and, firing as he fell, leapt into the darkly-flowing Mullet ! 



CHARLES'S RETURN, ETC. 233 

The current, all too violent to sink in, and uncommissioned now to 
save, hurried its black burden to the sea; and a crimson streak of gore 
marked the track of the suicide. 

The old man was not dead ; but a brace of bullets taking effect upon 
his feeble frame — one through the shoulder, and another which had 
grazed his head — had been quite enough to make him seem so. Forget- 
ful of all but that dear sufferer, and totally ignorant of Julian's fate — 
for she neither saw nor heard any thing, nor feared even for her own 
imminent peril, while her father lay dying on the grass — Emily had 
torn" off her scarf, and bound up, as well as she could, the ghastly 
scored head and broken shoulder. She succeeded in staunching the 
blood — for no great vessel had been severed — and so simple an applica- 
tion as grass dipped in water, proved to be a good specific. Then, to her 
exceeding joy, those eyes opened again, and that dear tongue faintly 
whispered — "Bless you." 

Oh, that blessing ! for it fell upon her heart : and fervently she knelt 
down there, and thanked the Great Preserver. 

And now, for friendly help ; there is no one near : and it is growing 
dusk; and she dared not leave him there alone one minute — for Julian 
— dreaded Julian, may return, and kill him. What shall she do? How 
to get him home ? Alas, alas ! he may die where he is lying. 

Hark, Emmy, hark ! The shouts of happy children bursting out 
of school ! See, dearest — see : here they come homewards merrily 
from Oxton. 

Thus, rewarded through the instrumentality of her own benevolence, 
help was speedily obtained ; and Mrs. Sainsbury's invalid-chair, hurried 
to the spot by an escort of indignant rustics, soon conveyed the recover- 
ing patient to the comforts of his own home, and the appliances of med- 
ical assistance. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

to 

CHARLES'S RETUEN; AND MRS. MACKIE'S EXPLANATION. 

And now the happy day was come at length ; that day formerly so 
hoped-for, latterly so feared, but last of all, hailed with the joy that trem- 
bles at its own intensity. The very morning afler the sad occurrence it 

20* 



234 1'HE TWINS. 

has just been my lot to chronicle — while the general was having his 
wounds dressed, slight ones, happily, but still he was not safe, as inflam- 
mation might ensue — while Mrs. Tracy was indulging in her third tum- 
bler, mixed to whet her appetite for shrimps — and while Emily was 
deciphering, for the forty thousandth time, Charles's sanguine hilhi-dovx 
— lo ! a dusty chaise and smoking posters, and a sun-burnt young fellow 
springing out, and just upon the stairs — they were locked in each 
other's arms ! 

Oh, the rapture of that instant ! it can but happen once within a life. 
Ye that have loved, remember such a meeting; and ye that never loved, 
conceive it if you can ; for my pen hath little skill to paint so bright a 
pleasure. It is to be all heart, all pulse, all sympathy, all spirit — but 
the warm soft kiss, that rarified bloom of the Material. 

How the sick old nurse got out, cased in many blankets ; how she was 
bundled up stairs, and deposited safely on a sofa, no poet is alive to 
sing : to those who would record the payment of postillions, let me leave 
so sweet a theme. 

The first fond greeting over, and those tumults of affection sobered 
down, Cliarles rejoiced to find how lovingly the general met him ; the 
kind and good old man fell upon his neck, as the father in the parable. 
Many things were then to be made known : and many questions answered, 
as best might be, about a mother and a brother; but well aware of all 
things ourselves, let us be satisfied that Charles heard in due time all 
they had to tell him ; though neither Emily nor the general could 
explain what had become of Julian after that terrible encounter. In 
their belief, he had fled for very life, thinking he had killed his father. 
Poor wretched man, thought Charles — on that same spot, too, where he 
would have murdered me ! And for his mother — why came she not 
down eagerly and happily, as mothers ever do, to greet her long-lost 
son? Do not ask, Charles; do not press the question. Think her ill, 
dying, dead — any thing but — drunken. He ran to her room-door; but 
it was locked — luckily. 

Now, Charles — now speedily to business; happy business that, if I 
may trust the lover's flushing cheek, and Emily's radiant eyes ; but a 
mournful one too, and a fearful, if I turn my glance to that poor old 
man, wounded in body and stricken in mind — who waits to hear, in more 
despondency than hope, what he knows to be the bitter truth — the truth 
that must be told, to the misery of those dear children. 

Faint and weak though she appeared, Jeanie Mackie's waning life 



CHARLES'S RETURN, ETC. 235 

spirited up for the occasion; her dim eye kindled; lier feeble frame 
was straight and strong; energy nerved her as she spoke; this hour is 
the errand of her being. 

Long she spoke, and loudly, in her broad Scotch way ; and the gen- 
eral objected many things, but was answered to them all ; and there 
was close cross-questioning, slow-caution, keen examination of docu- 
ments and letters : catechisms, solecisms, Scottisms ; reminiscences 
rubbed up, mistakes corrected ; and the grand result of all, Emily a 
Stuart, and the general not her father! I am only enabled to give a 
brief account of that important colloqu^^ 

It appears, that when Captain Tracy's company was quartered to the 
west of the Gwalior, sent thither to guard the Begum Dowlia against 
sundry of her disaffected subjects, a certain Lieutenant James Stuart 
was one among those welcome brave allies. That our gallant Tracy 
was the beautiful Begum's favourite soon became notorious to all ; and 
not less so, that the Begum herself was precisely in the same interesting 
situation as Mrs. James Stuart. The two ladies. Pagan and Christian, 
were, technically speaking, running a race together. Well, just as 
times drew nigh, poor Lieutenant Stuart was unfortunately killed in an 
insurrection headed by some fanatics, who disapproved of foreign friends, 
and perhaps of their princess's situation. His death proved fatal also to 
that kind and faithful wife of his — a dark Italian lady of high family, 
whose love for James had led her to follow him even into Central Hin- 
doostan : she died in giving birth to a babe ; and Jeanie Mackie, the 
lieutenant's own foster-mother, who waited on his Avife through all their 
travels, assisted the poor orphan into this bleak world, and loved it as 
her own. 

Two days after all this, the Begum herself had need of Mrs. Mackie : 
for it was prudent to conceal some things, if she could, from certain 
Brahmins, who were to lier what John Knox had erstwhile been to 
Mary : and Jeanie Mackie, burdened with her little Amy Stuart, aided 
in the birth of a female Tracy-Begum. So, the nurse tended both 
babes ; and more than once had marvelled at their general resemblance ; 
Amy's mother looked out again from those dark eyes ; there was not a 
shade between the children. 

Now, Mrs. Mackie perceived, m a very little while, how fond both 
Christian and Pagan appeared of their own child ; and how little notice 
was taken by any body of the poor Scotch gentleman's orphan. Accord, 
ingly, with a view to give her favourite all worldly advantages, she adroitly 



236 THE TWINS. 

changed the children; and, while she was still kind and motherly to the 
little Tracy-Begum, she had the satisfaction to see her pet supposititiously 
brought up in all the splendours of an Eastern court. 

Years wore away, for Captain Tracy was quite happy, the Begum 
being a fine showy woman, and the pretty child his playmate and pas- 
time : so he never cared to stir from his rich quarters, till the company's 
orders forced him : and then Puttymuddyfudgepoor hailed him accumu- 
latively both major and colonel. 

When he found that he must go, he insisted on carrying off the child; 
and the Begum was as resolute against it. Then Mrs. Mackie, eager to 
expedite little Stuart in her escape, went to the princess, told her how 
that, in anticipation of this day, she had changed the children, and got 
great rewards for thus restoring to the mother her own offspring. 

The remainder of that old Scotch nurse's very prosy tale may be left 
to be imagined : for all that was essential has been stated : and the doc- 
uments in proof of all were these — 

First : The marriage certificates of James Stuart and Ami di Romagna, 
duly attested, both in the Protestant and Romanist forms. 

Secondly : Divers letters to Lieutenant Stewart from his friends at 
Glenmuir; others to Mrs. Stuart, from her father, the old Marquis di 
Romagna, at Naples : several trinkets, locks of hair, the wedding-ring, &c. 

Thirdly : A grant written in the Hindoostanee chai'acter, from the 
Begum Dowlia, promising the pension of thirty rupees a month to Jeanie 
Mackie, for having so cleverly preserved to her the child : together with 
a regular judicial acknowledgement, both from several of Tracy's own 
sepoys, and from the Begum herself, that the girl, whom Captain Tracy 
was so fond of, was, to the best of their belief. Amy Stuart. 

Fourthly : A miniature of Mrs. James Stuart, exactly portraying the 
features of her daughter — this bright, beautiful, dark-eyed face — our 
own beloved Emily Warren. 

And to all that accumulated evidence, Jeanie Mackie bore her livinc 
testimony ; clearly, unhesitatingly, and well assured, in the face of God 
and man. 

Doubt was at an end ; fear was at an end ; hope was come, and joy. 
Happy were the lovers, happy Jeanie Mackie, but happiest of all 
appeared the general himself. For now she might be his daughter 
indeed, sweet Emmy Tracy still, dear Charles's loving wife. And he 
blessed them as they knelt, and gave them to each other; well-rewarded 
children of affection, who had prayed in their distress! 



JULIAN TURNS UP, ETC. 237 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

JULIAN TURNS UP: AND THERE'S AN END OF MS. TRACT. 

There is a muddy sort of sand-bank, acting as a delta to the Mullet, 
just where it spreads from deep to shallow, and falls into the sea. 
Strange wild fowl abound there, coming from the upper clouds in flocks ; 
and at high water, very little else but rushes can be seen, to testify its 
sub-marine existence. 

A knot of fishermen, idling on the beach, have noticed an uncommon 
flight of Royston crows gathered at the island, with the object, as it 
would appear, of battening on a dead porpoise, or some such body, just 
discernible among the rushes. Stop — that black heap may be kegs of 
whiskey ; — where 's the glass ? 

Every one looked : it warn't barrels — and it warn't a porpoise : what 
was it, then ? they had universally nothing on earth to do, so they pushed 
off in company to see. 

I watched the party off, and they poked among the rushes, and heaved 
out what seemed to me a seal : so I ran down to the beach to look at the 
strange creature they had captured. Something wrapped in a sail ; no 
doubt for exhibition at per head. 

But they brought out that black burden solemnly, laying it on the 
beach at Burleigh : a crowd quickly collected round them, that I could 
not see the creature : and some ran for a magistrate, and some for a 
parson. Then men in office came — made a way through the crowd, 
and I got near : so near, that my foolish curiosity lifted up the sail, and 
I beheld — what had been Julian. 

O, sickening sight : for all which the pistol had spared of that swart 
and hairy face, had been preyed upon by birds and fishes ! 

There was a hurried inquest : the poor general and Emily deposed to 
what they knew, and the rustics, who escorted him from Oxton. The 
verdict could be only one — self-murder. 

So, by night, on that same swampy island, when the tide was low, 
they buried him, deeply staked into the soil, lest the waves should disin- 
ter him, without a parting prayer. Such is the end of the wicked. 

In a day or two, I noticed that a rude wooden cross had been set over 
the spot : and it gratified me much to hear that a rough-looking crew of 
smugglers had boldly come and fixed it there, to hallow, if they could, 
a comrade's grave. 



238 THE TWINS. 

However, these poor fellows had been cheated hours before : Charles's 
brotherly care had secured the poor remains, and the vicar winked a 
blind permission : so Charles buried them by night in the chui'ch-yard 
corner, under the yew, reading many prayers above them. 

Two fierce-looking strange men went to that burial with reverent 
looks, as it were chief mourners ; and when all the rites were done, I 
heard them gruffly say to Charles, "God bless you, sir, for this!" 

When the mother heard those tidings of her son, she was sobered on 
the instant, and ran about the house with all a mother's grief, shrieking 
like a mad woman. But all her shrieks and tears could not bring back 
poor Julian ; deep, deep in the silent grave, she cannot wake him — can- 
not kiss him now. Ah well ! ah well ! 

Then did she return to his dear room, desperate for him — and Hol- 
lands; once, twice, thrice, she poured out a full tumbler of the burning 
fluid, and drank it off like water; and it maddened her brain: her mind 
was in a phrensy of delirium, while her body shook as with a palsy. 

Let us draw the curtain; for she died that night. 

They buried her in Aunt Green's grave: what a meeting theirs will 
be at the day of resurrection ! 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE OLD SCOTCH NUESE GOES HOME. 

Six months at least — this is clearly not a story of the unities — six 
months' interval must now elapse before the wedding-day. Charles 
and Emmy — for he called her Emmy still, though Jeanie Mackie would 
persist in mouthing it to " Aamy," — wished to have it delayed a year, in 
respect for the memory of those who, with all their crime and folly, 
were not the less a mother and a brother: but the general would not 
hear of such a thing; he was growing very old, he said; although 
actually he seemed to have taken out a new lease of life, so young 
again and buoyant was the new-found heart within him ; and thus 
growing old, he was full of fatherly fear that he should not live to see 
his children's happiness. It was only reasonable and proper that our 
pair of cooing doves should acquiesce in his desire. 



THE OLD SCOTCH NURSE GOES HOME. 239 

Meanwhile, I am truly sorry to say it, Jeanie Mackie died ; for it 
would have been a good novel-like incident to have suffered the faithful 
old creature to have witnessed her favourite's wedding, and then to have 
been forthwith killed out of the way, by — perishing in the vestry. How- 
ever, things were ordered otherwise, and Jeanie Mackie did not live to 
see the wedding : if you wish to know how and where she died, let me 
tell you at once. 

Scotland — Argyleshire — Glenmuir ; this was the focus of her hopes 
and thoughts — that poor old Indian exile ! She had left it, as a buxom 
bright-haired lassie : but oaks had now grown old that she had planted 
acorns ; and grandmothers had died palsied, whom she remembered 
born ; still, around the mountains and the lakes, those changeless fea- 
tures of her girlhood's rugged home, the old woman's memory wandered; 
they were pictured in her mind's eye hard, and clear, and definite as if 
she looked upon them now. And her soul's deep hope was to see them 
once again. 

There was yet another object which made her yearn for Scotland. 
Lieutenant Stuart had been the younger of two brothers, the eldest born 
of whom became, upon his father's, the old laird's, death, Glenmuir and 
Glenmurdock. Now, though twice married, this elder brother, the new 
laird, never had a child ; and the clear consequence was, that Amy Stuart 
was likely to become sole heiress of her ancestor's possessions. The 
lieutenant's marriage with an Italian and a Romanist had been, doubt- 
less, any thing but pleasant to his friends ; the strict old Presbyterians, 
and the proud unsullied family of Stuart, could not palate it at all. 
Nevertheless, he did marry the girl, according to the rites of both 
churches, and there was an end of it ; so, innumerable proverbs coming 
to their aid about "curing and enduring" and "must he's," and the 
place where "marriages are made," &c., the several aunts and cousins 
were persuaded at length to wink at the iniquity, and to correspond both 
with Mrs. James and her backsliding lieutenant. Of the offspring of 
that marriage, and her orphaned state, and of Mrs. Mackie's care, and 
the indefinite detention in central Hindostan, they had heard often-times ; 
for, as there is no corner of the world where a Scot may not be met 
with, so, with laudable nationality, they all hang together; and Glen- 
muir was written to frequently, all about the child, through Jeanie; 
Mackie, "her mark," and a scholarly sergeant, Duncan Blair. 

Amy's rights — or Emmy let us call her still, as Charles did — were 
now, therefore, the next object of Mrs. Mackie's zeal ; and all parties 



240 THE TWINS. 

interested willingly listened to the plan of spending one or two of those 
weary weeks in rubbing up relationships in Scotland ; the general also 
was not a little anxious about heritage and acres. Accordingly, off they 
set in the new travelling-carriage, with due notice of approach, heartily 
welcomed, to Dunstowr Castle, the fine old feudal stronghold of Robert 
Stuart, Laird of Glenmuir and Glenmurdock. 

The journey, the arrival, and the hearty hospitality ; and how the gray 
old chieftain kissed his pretty niece ; and how welcome her betrothed 
Charles and her kind life-long guardian, and her faithful nurse were 
made ; and how the beacons blazed upon the hill-tops, and the mustering 
clan gathered round about old Dunstowr ; and how the laird presented 
to them all their beautiful future mistress, and how Jeanie Mackie and 
her documents travelled up to Edinburgh, where writers to the signet 
pestered her heart-sick with over-caution; and how the case was all 
cleared up, and the distant disappointed cousin, who had irrationally 
hoped to be the heir, was gladdened, if not satisfied, with a pension and 
a cantle of Glenmuir; and how all was joyfulness and feasting, when 
Amy Stuart was acknowledged in her rights — the bagpipes and the 
wassail, salmon, and deer, and black-cock, with a river of mountain 
dew : let others tell who know Dunstowr ; for as I never was there, of 
course I cannot faithfully describe it. Should such an historian as I 
condescend to sheer inventions? 

With respect to Jeanie Mackie, I could learn no more than this : she 
was sprightly and lively, and strong as ever, though in her ninetieth 
year, till her foster-child was righted, and the lawyers had allowed her 
her claim. But then there seemed nothing else to live for; so her life 
gradually faded from her eye, as an expiring candle; and she would 
doze by the hour, sitting on a settle in the sun, basking her old heart in 
the smile of those old mountains. None knew when she died, to a min- 
ute ; for she died sitting in the sun, in the smile of those old mountains. 

They buried her, with much of rustic pomp, in the hill-church of 
Glenmuir, where all her fathers slept around her; and Emily and 
Charles, hand-in-hand, walked behind her coffin mournfully. 



FINAL. 241 

CHAPTER XXX. 

PINAL. 

Gladly would the laird have had the marriage at Dunstower, and have 
given away the beauteous bride himself: but there must still be two 
months more of decent mourning, and the general had long learned to 
sigh for the maligned delights of Burleigh Singleton. So, Glenmuir 
could only get a promise of reappearance some fine summer or other : 
and, after another day's deer-stalking, whic!i made the general repudiate 
telescopes from that day forth (the poor man's eyes had actually grown 
lobster-like with straining after antlers) — the travelling-carriage, and four 
lean kine from Inverary, whisked away the trio towards the South. 

And now, in due time, were the Tamworths full of joy — congratu- 
lating, sympathizing, merrymaking; and the three young ladies behaved 
admirably in the capacity of pink and silver bridesmaids; while George 
proved equally kind in attending (as he called it) Charles's "execution," 
wherein he was "turned off;" and the admiral, G. C. B. was so hand- 
in-glove with the general, H. E. I. C. S., that I have reason to believe 
they must have sworn eternal friendship, after the manner of the modern 
Germans. 

How beautiful our Emmy looked — I hate the broad Scotch Aamy— 
how bright her flashing eyes, and how fragrantly the orange-blossoms 
clustered in her rich brown hair; let him speak lengthily, whose pro- 
vince it may be to spin three volumes out of one: for me, I always wish 
to recollect that readers possess, on the average, at least as mucli imagin- 
ation as writers. And why should you not exercise it now? Is not 
Emmy in her bridal-dress a theme well worth a revery? 

For a similar reason, I must clearly disappoint feminine expectation, 
by forbearing to descant upon Charles's slight but manly form, and his 
Grecian beauty, &c., all the better for the tropics, and the trials and the 
troubles he had passed. 

When Captain Forbes, just sitting down to his soup in the Jamaica 
CofFee-house, read in the Morning Post, the marriage of Charles Tracy 
with Amy Stuart, he delivered himself mentally as follows: 

"There now! Poets talk of 'love,' and I stick to 'human nature.' 
When that fine young fellow sailed with me, hardly a year ago, in the 
Sir William Elphinston, he was over head and heels in love with old 
Q 21 



242 THE TWINS. 

Jack Tracy's pretty girl, Emily Warren: but I knew it wouldn't last 
long: I don't believe in constancy for longer than a week. It does one's 
heart good to see how right one is; here's what I call proof. My senti- 
mental spark kisses Emily Warren, and marries Amy Stuart." The 
captain, happier than before, called complacently for Cayenne pepper, 
and relished his mock-turtle with a higher gusto. 

It is worth recording, that the same change of name mystified slander, 
ous friends in the Presidency of Madras. 

And now, kind-eyed reader, this story of ^ The Twins^ must leave 
off abruptly at the wedding. As in its companion-tale, ' The Crock of 
Gold,'' one grand thesis for our thoughts was that holy wise command, 
"Thou shalt not covet," and as its other comrade '■Heart'' is founded on 
" Thou shalt not bear false witness," so in this, the seed-corn of the crop, 
were five pure words, " Thou shalt not commit adultery." Other morals 
doubtless grew up round us, for all virtue hangs together in a bunch: 
the harms of secresy, false witness, inordinate affections, and red mur- 
der : but in chief, as we have said. 

Moreover, I wish distinctly to make known, for dear "domestic" sake, 
that so fixr from our lovers' happiness having been consummated (that is, 
finished) in the honey-moon — it was only then begun. How long they are 
to live thus happily together. Heaven, who wills all things good, alone can 
tell ; I wish them three score years. Little ones, I hear, arrive annu- 
ally — to the unqualified joy, not merely of papa and mamma, but also 
of our communicative old general, his friend the G. C. B., and (all but 
most of any) the Laird of Glenmuir and Glenmurdock, whose heart 
has been entirely rejoiced by Charles Tracy having added to his name, 
and to his children's names, that of Stuart. 

Mr. and Mrs. Tracy Stuart are oflen at Glenmuir ; but oflener at Bur- 
leigh, where the general, I fancy, still resides. He protests that he never 
will keep a secret again : long may he live to say so ! 



END OF THE TWINS. 



HEART; 



A SOCIAL NOVEL. 



BY 

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, A.M., F. R. S. 



AUTHOR OF 



PROVERBIAL PHILOSOPHY. 



HARTFORD : 
PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. 

1853. 



HEART. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHEREIN TWO ANUOFS PARENTS HOLD A COLLOQUT. 

"Is he rich, ma'am? is he rich? ey? what — what? is he rich?*' 

Sir Thomas was a rapid little man, and quite an epicure in the use 
of that luscious monosyllable. 

"Is he rich, Lady Dillaway? ey? what?" 

" Really, Thomas, you never give me time to answer," replied the 
quintescence of quietude, her ladyship ; " and then it is perpetually the 
same question, and — " 

" Well, ma'am, can there be a more important question asked ? I repeat 
it, is he rich? ey? what? 

" You know. Sir Thomas, we never are agreed about the meaning of 
that word ; but I should say, very." 

As Lady Dillaway always spoke quite softly in a whisper, she had 
failed to enlighten the knight ; but he seemed, notwithstanding, to have 
caught her intention instinctively ; for he added, in his impetuous, impe- 
rious way, 

" No nonsense now, about talents and virtues, and all such trash ; but 
quick, ma'am, quick — is the man rich?" 

" In talents, as you mention the word, certainly, very rich ; a more 
clever or accomplished — " 

" Cut it short, ma'am — cut it short, I say — I '11 have no adventurers, 
who live by their wits, making up to my daughter — pedantic puppies, 
good for ushers, nothing else. What do they mean by knowing so much ? 
ey? what?" 

"And then, Sir Thomas, if you will only let me speak, a man of 
purer morals, finer feelings, higher Christian — " 

"Bah! well enough for curates: go on, ma'am — ^go on, and make 
haste to the point of all points — is he rich?", 

21* 



246 HEART. 

"You know I never will make haste, Thomas, for I never can have 
patience, and you shall hear; I am little in the habit of judging people 
entirely by their purses, not even a son-in-law, provided there is a suf- 
ficiency on the one side or the other for — " 

" Quick, mum — quick — rich — rich ? will the woman drive me mad ?" 
and Sir Thomas Dillaway, Knight, rattled loose cash in both pockets 
more vindictively than ever. But the spouse, nothing hurried, still 
crept on in her sotto voce adantino style, 

" Mr. Clements owes nothing, has something, and above and beside all 
his good heart, good mind, good fame, good looks, good family, possesses 
a contented — " 

"Pish! contented, bah!" our hasty knight's nose actually curled 
upwards in utter scorn as he added, " Now, that 's enough — quite enough. 
I '11 bet a plum the man 's poor. Contented indeed ! did you ever know a 
rich man yet who was contented — ey? mum — ey? or a poor one that 
wasn't — ey? what? I've no patience with those contented fellows: it's 
my belief they steal away the happiness of monied men. If this Mr. 
Clements was rich — rich, one wouldn't mind so much about talents, vir- 
tues, and contentment — work-house blessings; but the man's poor, I 
know it — poo-o-or!" 

Sir Thomas had a method quite his own of pronouncing those con- 
tradictory monosyllables, rich and poor : the former he gave out with an 
unctuous, fish-saucy gusto, and the word seemed to linger on his palate 
as a delicious morsel in the progress of delightful deglutition ; but when 
he uttered the word poor, it was with that "mewling and puking" 
miserable face, appropriated from time immemorial to the gulping of a 
black draught. 

"No, Lady Dillaway, right about 's the next word I shall say to that 
smooth-looking pauper, Mr. Henry Clements — to think of his impudence, 
making up to my daughter, indeed ! a poo-o-o-r man, too." 

"I did not tell you he was poor. Sir Thomas: you have run awiiy 
with that idea on your own account : tlie young man has enough for tlie 
present, owes nothing for the past, and reasonable expectations for the — 

"Future, I suppose, ey? what? I hate futures, all the lot of 'cm: 
cash down, ready money, bird in the hand, that's my ticket, mum: 
expectations, indeed! Well, go on — go on; I'm as patient as a — as 
a mule, you see ; go on, will you ; I may as well hear it all out, Lady 
Dillaway." 

"Well, Sir Thomas, since you think so little of the future, I will not 



COLLOQUY OF TWO PARENTS. 247 

insist on expectations ; though I really can only excuse your methods of 
judging by the fancy that you are far too prudent in fearing for the 
future : however, if you will not admit this, let me take you on your 
own ground, the present ; perhaps Mr. Clements may not possess quite 
as much as I could wish him, but then surely, dear Thomas, our daugh- 
ter must have more than — " 

I object to seeing oaths in print ; unless it must be once in a way, as 
a needful point of character : probably the reader's sagacity will supply 
many omissions of mine in the eloquence of Sir Thomas Dillaway and 
others. But his calm spouse, nothing daunted, quietly whispei'ed on — 
''You know, Thomas, you have boasted to me that your capital is doub- 
ling every year; penny-postage has made the stationery business most 
prosperous ; and if you were wealthy when the old king knighted you 
as lord mayor, surely you can spare something handsome now for an 
only daughter, who — " 

"Ma'am!" almost barked the affectionate father, "if Maria marries 
money, she shall have money, and plenty of it, good girl ; but if she 
will persist in wedding a beggar, she may starve, mum, starve, and all 
her poverty-stricken brats too, for any pickings they shall get out of my 
pocket. Ey? what? you pretend to read your Bible, mum — don't you 
know we're commanded to 'give to him that hath, and to take away 
from him that — '" 

"For shame. Sir Thomas Dillaway!" interrupted the wife, as well she 
-■ ight, for all her quietude: she was a good sort of woman, and her 
better nature aroused its wrath at this vicious application of a truth so 
just when applied to morals and graces, so bitterly iniquitous in the case 
of this world's wealth. I wish that our ex-lord mayor's distorted text 
may not be one of real and common usage. So, silencing her lord, whose 
character it was to be overbearing to the meek, but cringing to any thing 
like rebuke or opposition, she forthwith pushed her advantages, adding — 

"Your income is now four thousand a-year, as you have told me, 
Thomas, every hour of every day, since your last lucky hit in the gov- 
ernment contract for blue-elephants and whitey-browns. We have only 
John and Maria; and John gets enough out of his own stock-brokering 
business to keep his curricle and belong to clubs — and — alas ! my fears 
are many for my poor dear boy — I often wish, Thomas, that our John 
was not so well supplied with money : whereas, poor Maria — " 

" Tush, ma'am, you 're a fool, and have no respect at all for monied 
men. Jack's a rich nian^ mum — knows a trick or two, sticks at noth- 



248 HEART. 

ing on 'Change, shrewd fellow, and therefore, of course I don't stint 
him: ha! he's a regular Witney comforter, that boy — makes money — 
ay, for all his seeming extravagance, the clever little rogue knows how 
to keep it, too. If you only knew, ma'am, if you only knew — but we 
don't blab to fools." 

I dare say " fools " will hear the wise man's secret some day. 

"Well, Thomas, I am sure I have no wish to pry into business trans- 
actions ; all my present hope is to help the cause of our poor dear Maria." 

"Don't call the girl 'poor,' Lady Dillaway; it's no recommendation, 
I can tell you, though it may be true enough. Girls are a bad spec, 
unless they marry money. If our girl does this, well ; she will indeed 
bo to me a dear Maria, though not a poo-o-o-r one ; if she doesn't, let 
her bide, and be an old maid ; for as to marrying this fellow Clement's, 
I '11 cut him adrift to-morrow." 

"If you do, Sir Thomas, you will break our dear child's heart." 

"Heart, ma'am! what business has my daughter with a heart?" 
[what, indeed?] "I hate liearts; they were sent, I believe, purposely to 
make those who are plagued with 'em poo-o-o-r. Heart, indeed ! 
When did heart ever gain money? ey? what? It'll give, O yes, plenty 
— plenty, to charities, and churches, and orphans, and beggars, and any 
thing else, by way of getting rid of gold ; but as to gaining — bah ! 
heart indeed — pauperizing bit of muscle ! save me from wearing under 
my waistcoat what you 're pleased to call a heart. No, mum, no ; if 
the girl has got a heart to break, I've done with her. Heart indeed! 
she either marries money and my blessing, or marries beggary and my 
curse. But I should like to know who wants her to marry at all? Let 
her die an old maid." 

Probably this dialogue need go no farther : in the coming chapter we 
will try to be didactic. Meantime, to apostrophize ten words upon that 
last heartless sentence : 

"Let her die an old maid." An old maid! how many unrecorded 
sorrows, how much of cruel disappointment and heart-cankering delay, 
how often-times unwritten tragedies are hidden in that thoughtless little 
phrase! O, the mass of blighted hopes, of slighted affections, of cold 
neglect, and foolish, contumely, wrapped up in those three syllables! 
Kind heart, kind heart, never use them; neither lightly as in scorn, nor 
sadly as in pity: spare that ungenerous reproach. What! canst thou 
think that from a feminine breast the lovei", the wife, the mother, can be 
utterly sponged away without long years of bitterness? Can Nature's 



THE DAUGHTER HAS A HEART. 249 

wounds be cicatrized, or her soft feelings seared, without a thousand 
secret pangs? Hath it been no trial to see youthful bloom departing, 
and middle age creep on, without some intimate one to share the solitude 
of life ? Ay, and the coming prospect too — hath it greater consolations 
than the retrospect? How faintly common friends can fill that hollow 
of the heart ! how feebly can their kindness, at the warmest, imitate the 
sympathies and love of married life ! And in the days of sickness, or 
the hour 'of death — to be lonely, childless, husbandless, to be lightly 
cared for, Jittle missed — who can wonder that all those bruised and 
broken yearnings should ferment within the solitary mind, and some- 
times sour up the milk of human kindness? Be more considerate, more 
just, more loving to that injured heart of woman ; It hath loved deeply 
in its day ; but imperative duty or untoward circumstances nipped those 
early blossoms, and often generosity towards others, or the constancy of 
youthful blighted love, has made it thus alone. There was an age in 
this world's history, and may be yet again (if Heart is ever to be mon- 
arch of this social sphere), when those who lived and died as Jephthah's 
daughter, were reckoned worthily with saints and martyrs. Heed thou, 
thus, of many such, for they have offered up their hundred warm yearn- 
ings, a hecatomb of human love, to God, the betrothed of their affections ; 
and they move up and down among this inconsiderate world, doing good. 
Sisters of Charity, full of pure benevolence, and beneficent beyond the 
widow's mite. Heed kinder then, and blush for very shame, O man 
and woman ! looking on this noble band of ill-requited virgins ; remem- 
ber all their trials, and imitate their deeds ; for among the legion of that 
unreguarded sisterhood whom you coldly call old maids, are often seen 
the world's chief almoners of warm unselfish sympathy, generous in mind, 
if not in means, and blooming with the immortal youth of charity and 
kindliness. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW THE DAUGHTER H.\S A HEART; AlsT), WHAT IS COMMONER, A lOVER. 

Yes, Maria Dillaway, though Sir Thomas's own daughter, had a heart, 
a warm and good one : it was her only beauty, but assuredly at once the 
best adornment and cosmetic in the world. The mixture of two such 



250 HEART. 

conflicting characters as her father and mother might (with common 
Providence to bless the pair) unitedly produce heart; although their 
plebeian countenances could hardly be expected without a direct miracle 
to generate beauty. Maria inherited from her father at once his impetu- 
osity and his little button-nose : although the latter was neither purple 
nor pimply, and the former was more generous and better directed : 
from her mother she derived what looked to any one at first sight very 
like red hair, along with great natural sweetness of disposition: albeit 
her locks had less of fire, and her sweetness more of it: sympathy was 
added to gentleness, zeal to patience, and universal tenderness to a gen- 
eral peace with all the world ; for that extreme quietude, almost apathy, 
alluded to before, having been superseded by paternal impetuosity, the 
result of all was Heart. She doated on her mother; and (how she 
contrived this, it is not quite so easy to comprehend) she found a great 
deal loveable even in her father. But in fact she loved every body. 
Charity was the natural atmosphere of her kind and feeling soul — always 
excusing, assisting, comforting, blessing ; charity lent music to her tongue, 
and added beauty to her eyes — charity gave grace to an otherwise 
ordinary figure, and lit her freckled cheek with the spirit of loveliness. 
Let us be just — nay, more: let us be partial, to the good looks of poor 
dear Maria. Notwithstanding the snub nose (it is not snub; who says 
it is snub? — it is mignon, personified good nature) — notwithstanding the 
carroty hair (I declare, it was nothing but a fine pale auburn after all) — 
notwithstanding the peppered face (oh, how sweetly rayed with smiles!) 
and the common figure (gentle, unobtrusive, full of delicate attentions) — 
yes, notwithstanding all these unheroinals, no one who had a heart him- 
self could look upon Maria without pleasure and approval. She was 
the very incarnation of cheerfulness, kindness, and love : you forgot the 
greenish colour of those eyes which looked so tenderly at you, and so 
often-times were dimmed with tears of unaffected pity; her smile, at 
any rate, was most enchanting, the very sunshine of an amiable mind ; 
her lips dropped blessings; her brow was an open plain of frankness 
and candour; sincerity, warmth, disinterested sweet affections threw 
such a lustre of loveliness over her form, as well might fascinate the 
mind alive to spiritual beauty: and altogether, in spite of natural defects 
and disadvantages — nez retrousse, Cleopatra locks, and all — no one but 
those constituted like her materialized father and his kind, ever looked upon 
Maria without unconsciously admiring her, he scarcely knew for wli.-it. 
Though ihrve appeared little to praise, there certainly was every thing 



THE DAUGHTER HAS A HEART. 251 

to please ; and faulty as in all pictorial probability was each lineament 
of face and line of form, taken separately and by detail, the veil of uni- 
versal charity softened and united them into one harmonious whole, 
making of Maria Dillaway a most pleasant, comfortable, wife-like little 
personage. 

At least, so thought Henry Clements. Neither was it any sudden 
fortnight's fancy, but the calm consideration of two full years. Maria's 
was a character which grew upon your admiration gradually — a char- 
acter to like at first just a little; then to be led onwards imperceptibly 
from liking to loving ; and thence from fervid summer probably to fever 
heat. She dawned upon young Henry like the blush of earliest morn, 
still shining brighter and fairer till glorious day was come. 

He had casually made her acquaintance in the common social circle, 
and even on first introduction had been much pleased, not to say capti- 
vated, with her cordial address, frank unsophisticated manners, and 
winsome looks; he contrasted her to much advantage with the affected 
coquette, the cold formal prude, the flippant woman of fashion, the 
empty heads and hollow hearts wherewithal society is peopled. He 
had long been wearied out with shallow courtesies, frigid compliments, 
and other conventional hypocrisies, up and down the world ; and wanted 
something better to love than mere surface beauty, mere elegant accom- 
plishment — in a word, he yearned for Heart, and found the object of his 
longings in affectionate Maria. 

This first casual acquaintance he had of course taken every oppor- 
tunity to improve as best he might, and happily found himself more and 
more charmed on every fresh occasion. How heartily glad she was to 
see him! how unaffectedly sincere in her amiable joy ! how like a kind 
sister, a sympathizing friend, a very true-love — a dear, cheerful, warm- 
hearted girl, who would make the very model for a wife! 

It is little wonder that, with all external drawbacks, now well-nigh 
forgotten, the handsome Henry Clements found her so attractive; nor 
that, following diligently his points of advantage, he progressed from 
acquaintanceship to intimacy, and intimacy to avowed admiration ; and 
thence (between ourselves) to the resolute measure of engagement. 

I say between ourselves, because nobody else in the world knew it 
but the billing pair of lovers ; and even they have got the start of us 
only by a few hours. As for Henry Clements, he was a free man in all 
senses, with nobody to bias his will or control his affections — an orphan, 
unclogged by so much as an uncle or aunt to take him to task on the 



252 HEART. 

score of his attachment, or to plague him with impertinent advice. His 
father, Captain Clements of the seventieth, had fallen " gloriously " on 
the bloody field of Waterloo, and the pensioned widow had survived her 
gallant hero barely nine winters ; leaving little Henry thrown upon the 
wide world at ten years of age, under the nominal guardianship of some 
very distant Ulster cousin of her own, a Mackintosh, Mackenzie, or 
Macfarlane — it is not yet material which ; and as for the lad's little 
property, his poor patrimony of two hundred a-year had hitherto amply 
sufficed for Harrow and for Cambridge (where he had distinguished 
himself highly), for his chambers in the Temple, and his quiet bachelor, 
mode of life as a man of six-and-twenty. 

Accordingly, our lover took counsel of nobody but Maria's beaming 
eyes, when he almost unconsciously determined to lay siege to her : he 
really could not make up his mind to the preliminary formal process of 
storming Sir Thomas in his counting-house, at the least until he had 
made sure that Maria's kind looks were any thing more particular than 
universal charity ; and as to Lady Dillaway, it was impossible to broach 
so delicate a business to her till the daughter had looked favourably as 
aforesaid, set aside her ladyship's formidable state of quiescence, and 
apparent (though only apparent) lack of sympathy. So the lover still 
went on sunning his soul from time to time in Maria's kindly smiles, 
until one day, that is, yesterday, they mutually found out by some happy 
accident how very dear they were to each other; and mutually vowed 
ever to continue so. It was quite a surprise this, even to both of them 
— an extemporary unrehearsed outburst of the heart; and Maria dis- 
covered herself pledged before she had made direct application to mamma 
about the business. However, once done, she hastened to confide the 
secret to her mother's ear, earnestly requesting her to break it to papa. 
With how little of success, we have learnt already. 



CHAPTER III. 

PATERNAL AMIABILITIES. 

Maria, as we know, loved her father, for she loved every thing that 
breathes ; but she would not have been human had she not also feared 
him. In fact, he was to her a very formidable personage, and one would 



PATERNAL AMIABILITIES. 253 

have thought any thing but an amiable one. Ovei* Maria's gentle kind- 
ness he could domineer as loftily as he would cringe in cowardly 
humiliation to the boisterous effrontery of that unscrupulous and wily 
stockjobber, "my son Jack." With the tyranny proper to a little mind, 
he would trample on the neck of a poor meek daughter's filial duty, 
desiring to honour its parent by submission ; and then, with consistent 
meanness, would lick the dust like a slave before an undutiful only son, 
who had amply redeemed all possible criminalities by successful (I did 
not say honest) gambling in the funds, and otherwise. 

Yes! John Dillaway was rich; and, climax to his praise, rich by his 
own keen skill, independent of his father, though he condescended still 
to bleed him. In this "money century," as Kohl, the graphic traveller, 
has called it, riches "cover the multitude of sins;" leaving poor Maria's 
cL-.rity to cover its own naked virtues, if it can. So John was the 
father's darling, notwithstanding the very heartless and unbecoming 
conduct he had exhibited daily for these thirty years, and the marked 
scorn wherewithal he treated that pudgy city knight, his dear progen- 
itor; but then, let us repeat it as Sir Thomas did — Jack was rich — rich, 
and such a comfort to his father; whereas Maria, poor fool, with all her 
cheap unmarketable love and duty, never had earned a penny — never 
could, but was born to be a drain upon him. Therefore did he scorn 
her, and put aside her kindnesses, because she could not "make money." 

For what end on earth should a man make money ! It is reasonable 
to reply, for the happiness' sake of others and himself; but, in the fre- 
quent case of a rich and cold Sir Thomas, what can be the object in such? 
Not to purchase happiness therewith himself, nor yet to distribute it to 
others ; a very dog in the manger, he snarls above the hay 'he cannot 
cat, and is full of any thoughts rather than of giving : whilst, as for his 
own pleasure, he manifestly will not stop a minute to enjoy a taste of 
happiness, even if he finds it in his home ; nay, more, if it meets him by 
the way, and wishes to cling about his heart, he will be found oflen to 
fling it off with scorn, as a reaper would the wild sweet corn-flower 
in some handful of wheat he is cutting. O, Sir Thomas! is not poor 
Maria's love worth more than all your rich rude Jack's sudden flush of 
money ? is it not a deeper, higher, purer, wiser, more abundant source 
of pleasure ? You have yet to learn the wealth of her affections, and 
his poverty of soul. 

It was not without heart-sickness, believe me, sore days and weeping 
nights, that affectionate Maria saw her father growing more and more 

22 



254 HEART. 

estranged from her. True, he had never met her love so warmly that 
it was not somewhat checked and chilled ; true, his nature had reversed 
the law of reason, by having systematically treated her with less and less 
of kindness ever since the nursery; she did seem able to remember 
something like affection in him while she was a prattling infant ; but as 
the mental daylight dawned apace, and she grew (one would fancy) 
worthier of a rational creature's love, it strangely had diminished year by 
year; moreover, she could scarcely look back upon one solitary occa- 
sion, whereon her father's voice had instructed her in knowledge, spoken 
to her in sympathy, or guided her footsteps to religion. Still, habituated 
as she long had now become to this daily martyrdom of heart, and sorely 
bruised by coarse and common worldliness as had been every fibre of 
her feelings, she could not help perceiving that things got worse and 
worse, as the knight grew richer and richer; and often-times her eyes 
ran over bitterly for coldness and neglect. There was, indeed, her 
mother to fly to; but she never had been otherwise than a very quiet 
creature, who made but little show of what feeling she possessed ; and 
then the daughter's loving heart was affectionately jealous of her 
father too. 

"Why should he be so cold, with all his impetuosity? so formal, in 
spite of his rapidity ? so little generous of spirit, notwithstanding all his 
wonderful prosperity?" 

Ah, Maria, if you had not been quite so unsophisticated, you would 
have left out the latter " notwithstanding." Nothing hardens the heart, 
dear child, like prosperity; and nothing dries up the affections more 
effectually than this hot pursuit of wealth. The deeper a man digs 
into the gold mine, the less able — ay, less willing — is he to breathe the 
sweet air of upper earth, or to bask in the daylight of heaven : down- 
ward, downward still, he casts the anchor of his grovelling affections, 
and neither can nor will have a heart for any thing but gold. 

Moreover, have you wondered, dear Maria, at the common fact (one 
sees it in every street, in every village), that parental love is oftenest at its 
zenith in the nursery, and then falls lower and lower on the firmament 
of human life, as the child gets older and older? Look at all dumb 
brutes, the lower animals of this our earth ; is it not thus by nature's 
law with them? The lioness will perish to preserve that very whelp, 
whom she will rend a year or two hence, meeting the young lion in the 
forest ; the hen, so careful of her callow brood, will peck at them, and 
buffet them away, directly they are fully fledged ; the cow forgets how 



PATERNAL AMIABILITIES. 255 

much she once loved yonder well-grown heifer ; and the terrier-bitch fights 
for a bit of gristle with her own two-year-old, whom she used to nurse 
so tenderly, and fomished her own bowels to feed. And can you expect 
that men, who make as little use as possible of Heart, that unlucrative 
commodity — who only exercise Reason for shrewd purposes of gain, not 
wise purposes of good, and who might as well belong to Cunningham's 
"City of O," for any souls they seem to carry about with them — can 
you expect that such unaffectioned, unintelligent, unspiritualized ani- 
mals, can rise far above the brute in feeling for their offspring ? No, 
Maria ; the nursery plaything grows into the exiled school-boy ; and the 
poor child, weaned from all he ought to love, soon comes to be regarded 
in the light of an expensive youth; he is kept at arm's length, unblest, 
uncaressed, unloved, unknown ; then he grows up apace, and tops his 
father's inches ; he is a man now, and may well be turned adrift ; if he 
can manage to make money, they are friends ; but if he can only con- 
trive to spend it, enemies. Then the complacent father moans about 
ingratitude, for he did his duty by the boy in sending him to school. 

O, faults and follies of the by-gone times, which lingered even to a 
generation now speedily passing away ! — ye are waning with it, and a 
better dawn has broken on the world. Happily for man, the multipli- 
cation of his kind, and pervading competition in all manner of things 
mercantile, are breaking down monopolies, and hindering unjust accu- 
mulation, with its necessary love of gain. "Satisfied with little" is 
young England's cry; a better motto than the "Craving after much" of 
their fathers. No longer immersed, single-handed, in a worldly business, 
which seven competitors now relieve him of; no longer engrossed 
with the mint of gold gains, which a dozen honest rivals now are 
sharing with him eagerly, the parent has leisure to instruct his children's 
minds, to take an interest in their pursuits, and to cultivate their best 
affections. Home is no longer the place perpetually to be driven from; 
the voices of paternal duty and domestic love are thrillingly raised to 
lead the tuneful chorus of society ; and fathers, as well as mothers, are 
beginning to desire tliat their children may be able to remember them 
hereafter as the ever-sympathizing friend, the wisely indulgent teacher, 
the guide of their religion, and the guardian of their love; quite as 
much as the payer of their bills and the filler of their purses. 

The misfortune of a past and passing generation has been, too much 
money in too few hands ; its faults, neglect of duty ; its folly, to expect 
therefrom the too-high meed of well-earned gratitude; and from this 



256 HEART. 

triple root has grown up social selfishness, a general lack of Heart. 
No parent ever yet, since the world was, did his duty properly, as God 
intended him to do it, by the affections of the mind and the yearnings af 
the heart, as well as by the welfare of the body with its means, and lived 
to complain of an ungrateful child. He may think he did his duty; oh 
yes, good easy man ! and say so too, very, very bitterly ; and the world 
may echo his most partial verdict, crying shame on the unnatural Goneril 
and Regan, bad daughters who despise the Lear in old age, or on the 
dissolute and graceless youth, whose education cost so much, and yields 
so very little. But money cannot compensate that maiden or that youth 
for early and habitual injustice done to their budding minds, their sensi- 
tive hearts, their craving souls, in highei', deeper, holier things than even 
cash could buy. " Home affections " — this was the magic phrase inscribed 
upon the talisman they stole from that graceless youth ; and the loss of 
home affections is scantily counterbalanced at the best by a critical 
acquaintance with ^Dawes's Canons,' and ^Bos on Ellipses,' in his ardent 
spring of life, and by a little more of the paternal earnings which the 
legacy-office gives him in his manhood. 

But let us not condemn generations past and passing, and wink at our 
own-time sins ; we have many motes yet in our eyes, not to call them 
very beams. The infant school, the factory, the Union, and other 
wholesale centralizations, ruin the affections of our poor. O, for the 
spinning-wheel again within the homely cottage, and those difficult 
spellings by the grand-dame's knee ! There is wisdom and stability in 
a land thick-set with such early local anchorages; but the other is all 
false, republioan, and unaffectioned. So, too, the luxurious city club 
has cheated many a young pair of their just domestic happiness, for the 
husband grew dissatisfied with home and all its poor humilities; whilst 
a bad political philosophy, discouraging marriage and denouncing off- 
spring, has insidiously crept into the very core of private families, 
setting children against parents and parents against children, because a 
cold expediency winks at the decay of morals, and all united social 
influences strike at the sacrifice of Heart. 

We are forgetting you, poor affectionate Maria, and yet will it comfort 
your charity to listen. For the time is coming — yea, now is — when a 
more generous, though poorer age will condemn the Mammon phrensy 
of that which has preceded it. Boldly do we push our standards in 
advance, pressing on the flying foe, certain that a gallant band will fol- 
low. Fearlessly, here and there, is heard the voice of some solitary 



EXCUSATORY. 257 

zealot, some isolated missionary for love, and truth, and philanthropic 
good, some dauntless apostle in the cause of Heart, denouncing selfish 
wealth as the canker of society: and, hark! that voice is not alone; 
there is a murmur on the breeze as the sound of many waters ; it comes, 
it comes! and the young have caught it up; and manhood hears the 
thrilling strain that sinks into his soul ; and old age, feebly listening, 
wonders (never too late) that he had not hitherto been wiser ; and the 
whole social universe electrically touched from man to man, I hear 
them in their new-born generosities, penitently shouting "God and 
Heart!" even louder than they execrate the memory of Dagon. 



CHAPTER IV. 

EXCUSATORY. 

It really may be numbered among doubts whether it is possible to 
exaggerate the dangers into which a fictionist may fall. My marvel is, 
that any go unstabbed. How on earth did Cervantes continue to grow 
old, after having pointed the finger of derision at all grave Spain? 
There is Boccaccio, too ; he lived to turn threescore, in spite of the thou- 
sand husbands and wives, who might pretty well imagine that he spoke 
of them. Only consider how many villains, drawn to the life, Walter 
Scott created. What! were there no heads found to fit his many caps, 
hats, helmets, and other capillary properties? What! are we so blind, so 
few of friends, that we cannot each pick out of our social circles Mrs. 
Gore's Dowager, Mrs. Grey's Flirt, Mrs. Trollope's Widow, and Boz's 
Mrs. Nickleby ? Who can help thinking of his lawyer, when he makes 
acquaintance with those immortal firms Dodson and Fogg, or Quirk, 
Snap, and Gammon ? Is not Wrexhill libellous, and Dr. Hookwell per- 
sonal ? Arise ! avenge them both, ye zealous congregations ! Why 
slumber pistols that should damage Bulwer? Why are the clasp-knives 
sheathed, which should have drunk the blood of James? Hath every 
"[dash] good-natured friend" forgotten to be officious, and neglected to 
demonstrate to relations and acquaintances that this white villain is ]\Ir. 
A., and that old virgin poor Miss B. ? Speak, Plumer Ward, courageous 
veteran, Have the critics yet forgiven Mr. John Paragraph — forgotten, is 
R 22* 



258 HEART. 

impossible ? and how is it no house-keeper has arsenicked my soup, O 
rash recruit, for the mysteries of perquisite divulged in Mrs. Quarles? 

A dangerous craft is the tale-wright's, and difficult as dangerous. 
Human nature goes in casts, as garden-pots do. Lo, you ! the crowd of 
thumb-pots ; mean little tiny minds in multitudes, as near alike as possible. 
Then there are the frequent thirty -twos, average "clever creatures" in 
this mental age, wherein no one can make an ordinary how-d'ye-do 
acquaintance without being advertised of his or her surprising talents : 
and to pass by all intermediate sizes, here and there standing by himself, 
in all the prickly pride of an immortal aloe, some one big pot monopo- 
lizes all the cast of earth, domineering over the conservatory as Brutus's 
colossal Ccesar, or his metempsychosis in a Wellington. 

Again: no painter ever yet drew life-likeness, who had not tlie living 
models at least in his mind's eye : but no good painter ever yet betrayed 
the model in his figure ; unless (though these instances are rarish too) 
we except, pace Lawrence, the mystery of portraiture. He takes indeed 
a line here and a colour there ; but he softens this and heightens that ; 
so that none but he can well discover any trace of Homer's noble head 
in yonder sightless beggar, or Juno's queenly form in the Welsh woman 
trudging with her strawberry load to Covent Garden market. 

Flatter not thyself, fair Helen, I have not pictured thee in gentle Grace : 
tremble not, my little white friend Clatter, thou art by no means Simon 
Jennings. Dark Caroline Blunt, it is true thou hast fine eyes ; never- 
theless, in nothing else (I am sorry to assure thee) art thou at all like 
Emily Warren. Flaunting Lady Busbury, be calm ; if you had not 
been so wrathful, I never should have thought of you — undoubtedly you 
are not the type of Mrs. Tracy. 

Why will all these people don my imaginary characters? Truly, it 
may seem to be a compliment, as proving that they speak from heart to 
heart, of universal human nature, not unaptly ; still is their inventor or 
creator embarrassed terribly by such unwelcome honours ; your precious 
balms oppress him, gentle friends ; lift off your palm branches ; indeed, he 
is unworthy of these petty triumphs; and, to be serious, he detests them. 

No: once and for all, let a plain first person say it, I abjure person- 
alities ; my arrows are shot at a venture ; and if they hit any one at all, 
it is only that he stands in my shaft's way, and the harness of his con- 
science is unbuckled. The target of my feeble aim is general — to 
pierce the heart of evil, evil in the form of social heartlessness : it is no 
fault of mine, if some alarmed particulars will crowd about the mark. 



EXCUSATORY. 259 

Ideal characters, ideal incidents, ideal scenes — to these I honestly pledge 
myself: but as most men have two eyes, being neither naturally monocu- 
lar nor triocular, so most men of their own special cast have similar 
distinguishable sympathies. 

The overweening love of money is a seed, a soil, and a sun that gener- 
ates a certain crop : the aim of my poor husbandry is only to reap this ; 
but my sickle does not wish to wound the growers : let them stand aside ; 
or, better far, let them help me cut those rank and clogging tares, and bind 
them up in bundles to be burned. Heart is a svv'cct-smelling shrub, ill to 
stand against the chilling breath of worldliness : my small care desires to 
cherish this ; gather round it, friends ! shelter it beside me. How many 
fragrant flowers now are bursting into beauty ! how cheering is their scent ! 
how healthful the aroma of their bloom ! Pluck tliem with me ; they are 
sweet, delicate, and lustrous to look upon, even as the night-blowing cereus. 

Henceforth then, social circle, feel at peace with such as I am, whose 
public parable would teach, without any thought of personality, entirely 
disclaiming private interpretations : there are otlier people stout besides 
one's uncle, other people deaf besides one's aunt. Sir Thomas Dillaway 
is not Alderman Bunce, nor any other friend or foe I wot of: a mere 
creature of the counting-house, he is a human ledger-mushroom : rub 
away the mildev/ from your hearts, if any seem to see yourselves in 
him: neither have I ventured to transplant Miss Cassiopeia Curtis's red 
hair to dear Maria's head : imitate her graces, if you will, maiden ; but 
charge me not with copying your locks. Though "my son Jack" be a 
boisterous big rogue, on 'Change, and off it — let not mine own honest 
stock-broker put that hat upon his head, in the mono-mania that it fits 
him, because he may heretofore have been both bull and bear; and as 
for any other heroes yet to come upon this scene, to enact the tragedy 
or comedy of Heart — "Know all men by these presents," — your humble 
servant's will is to smite bad principles, not offending persons: to crusade 
against evil manners, not his guilty fellow-men. 

Wo is me ! who am I, that I should satirize my brethren ? — Yet, wo 
is me — if I silently hide the sin I see. Make me not an oilender for a 
word, seeing that my purposes are good. Be not hypercritical, for 
Heart's sake, against a man whose aim it is to help the cause of Heart. 
Neither count it sufficient to answer me with an inconclusive '' hi quoque ;" 
I know it, I feel it, I confess it, I would away with it. Heaven send to 
him that writes, as liberally as to those who read (yea, more, according 
to his deeper needs and failings) the grace to counteract all mammon- 
izing blights, and to cultivate this garden of the Heart. 



260 HEART, 

t 

f 

CHAPTER V. 

WHEREIN A WELL-IIEANING MOTHER ACTS VERY FOOLISHLY. 

Retxtrned from her unsuccessful embassage, Lady Dillaway deter- 
mined — kind, calm soul — to hide the bitter truth from poor Maria, that her 
father was inexorably adverse. A scene was of all things that indentical 
article least liked by the quiescent mother; and that her warm-hearted 
daughter would enact one, if she heard those echoes of paternal love, 
was clearly a problem requiring no demonstration. 

Accordingly, with well-intentioned kindliness, but shallowish wisdom, 
and most questionable propriety, Maria was persuaded to believe that 
her father had hem'd and haw'd a little, had objected no doubt to Henry's 
lack of money, but would certainly, on second thoughts, consider the 
affair more favourably : 

"You know your father's way, my love; leave him to himself, and I 
am sure his better feeling will not fail to plead your cause : it will be 
prudent, however, just for quiet's sake, to see less of Henry Clements 
for a day or two, till the novelty of my intelligence blows over. Mean- 
time, do not cry, dear child ; take courage, all will be well ; and I will 
give you my free leave to console your Henry too." 

"Dearest, dearest mamma, how can I thank you sufficiently for all 
this? But why may I not now at once fly to papa, tell him all I feel 
and wish cordially and openly, and touch his dear kind heart? I am 
sure he would give us both his sanction and his blessing, if he only 
knew how much I love him, and my own dear Henry." 

"Sweet child," sighed out mamma, "I wish he would, I trust he 
would, I believe indeed he will some day : but be advised by me, Maria, 
I know your father better than you do; only keep quiet, and all will 
come round well. Do not broach the subject to him — be still, qui'ce still ; 
and, above all, be careful that your father does not yet awhile meet Mr. 
Clements." 

"But, dearest mamma, how can I be so silent when my heart is full? 
and then I hate that gloomy sort of secresy. Do let me ask papa, and 
tell him all myself. Perhaps he himself will kindly break the ice for 
nie, now that your dear mouth has told him all, mamma. How I wish 
he would'" 



A MOTHER ACTS VERY FOOLISHLY. 261 

"Alas, Maria, you always are so sanguine : your father is not very much 
given, I fear, to that sort of sociality. No, my love ; if you only will be 
ruled by me, and will do as I do, managing to hold your tongue, I think you 
need not apprehend many conversational advances on your father's part." 

Poor Maria had more than one reason to fear all this was true, too 
true ; so her lip only quivered, and her eyes overflowed as usual. 

Thereafter, Lady Dillaway had all the talk to herself, and she smoothly 
whispered on without let or hindrance; and what between really hoping 
things kindly of her husband's better feelings, and desiring to lighten the 
anxieties of dear Maria's heart, she placed the whole affair in such a 
calm, warm, and glowing Claude-light, as apparently to supply an emen- 
dation (no doubt the right reading) to the well known aphorism — 

" The course of true love never did run smooth-cr." 

In fine, our warm and confiding Maria ran up to her own room quite 
elated after that interview; and she heartily thanked God that those 
dreaded obstacles to her affection were so easily got over, and that her 
dear, dear father had proved so kind. 

It is quite a work of supererogation to report how speedily the wel- 
come news were made known, by billet-doux, to Henry Clements ; but 
they rather smote his conscience, too, when he reflected that he had not 
yet made formal petition to the powers on his own account. To be sure, 
the)^ (the lovers, to wit) were engaged only yesterday, quite in an unin- 
tended, though delightful, way : and, previously to that important tHe-d- 
tHe, however much he may have thought of only dear Maria — however 
frequently he found himself beside her in the circle of their many mutual 
friends — however happily he hoped for her love — however foolishly he 
reveried about her kindness in the solitude of his Temple garret — still he 
never yet had seen occasion to screw his courage to the sticking ])oint, and 
boldly place his bliss at hard Sir Thomas's disposal. Some day — not 
yet — perhaps next week, at any rate not exactly to-day — these were his 
natural excuses; and they availed him even to the other side of that 
social Rubicon, engagement. Nevertheless, now at length something 
must decidedly be done; and, within half an hour, Finsbury's deserted 
square echoed to the heroic knock of Mr. Henry Clements, fully deter- 
mined upon claiming his Maria at her father's hands. 

The knight was out ; probably, or rather certainly, not yet returned 
from his counting-house in St. Benet's Sherehog. So, perforce, our 
hero could only have an audience with his lady. 



262 HEART. 

The same glossing over of unpalatable truths — tne same quiet-breatli- 
itig counsel — the same tranquil sort of hopefulness — fully satisfied the 
lover that his cause was gained. How could he think otherwise? In 
the father's absence, he had broached that mighty topic to the mother, 
who even now hailed him as her son, and promised him his father's 
favour. What could be more delicious than all this? and what more 
honourable, while prudent, too, and filial, than to acquiesce in Lady 
Dillaway's fears about her husband's nervousness at the sight of one 
who was to take from him an only and beloved daughter? It was deli- 
cacy itself — charming; and Henry determined to make his presence, 
for the first few days, as scarce as possible in the sight of that affection- 
ate father. 

And thus it came to pass that two open and most honourable minds, 
pledged to heartiest love, could not find one speck of sin in loving on 
clandestinely. Nay, was it clandestine at all? Is it, then, merely a 
legal fiction, and not a religious truth, that husband and wife are one? 
and is it not quite as much a matrimonial as a moral one that father and 
mother are so too? Was it not decidedly enough to have spoken to the 
latter, especially when she undertook to answer for the former? Sir 
Thomas was a man engrossed in business; and, doubtless, left such 
affairs of the Heart to the kinder keeping of Lady Dillaway. No; 
there was nothing secret nor clandestine in the matter; and I entirely 
absolve both Henry and Maria. They could not well have acted othei*- 
wise ; if any harm should come to it, the mother is to blame. 

Lady Dillaway, without doubt, should have known heV husband better: 
but her tranquil love of our dear Maria seemed to have infatuated her 
into simply believing — what she so much wished — her happiness secure- 
She heeded not how little sympathy Sir Thomas felt with lovers ; and 
only encouraged her innocent child to play the dangerous game of 
unconscious disobedience. Accordingly, consistent with that same quiet 
kindness of character which had smoothed away all difficulties hitherto, 
the indulgent mother now allowed the loving pair to meet alone, for the 
first time permissively, to tell each other all their happiness. Lady 
Dillaway left the drawing-room, and sent Maria to the heart that beat 
with hers. 

Who shall describe the beauty of that interview — the gush of first 
affections bursting up unchecked, unchidden, as hot springs round the 
Hecla of this icy world! They loved and were beloved — openly, devo- 
tedly, sincerely, disinterestedly. Henry had never calculated even once 



PLEASANT BROTHER JOHN. 263 

how much the city knight could give his daughter; and as for Maria, if 
she had not naturally been a girl all heart, the home wherein she was 
brought up had so disgusted her of still-repeated riches, that (it is easy 
of belief) the very name of poverty would be music to her ears. 
Accordingly, how they flew into each other's arms, and shed many 
happy tears, and kissed many kindest kisses, and looked many tenderest 
things, and said many loving words, "let Petrarch's spirit in heroics 
sing:" as for our present prosaical Muse, she delights in such affections 
too naturally and simply to wish to cripple them with rhymes, or confine 
them in sonnets ; she despises decoration of simple and beautiful Natui'e 
— gilding gold, and painting lilies ; and she loves to throw a veil of secret 
sanctity over all such heaven-blest attachments. "Hence! ye profane," 
— these are no common lovers : I believe their spirits, still united in 
affections that increase with time, will go down to the valley of death 
unchangeably together; and will thence emerge to brighter bliss hand 
in hand throughout eternity — a double Heart with one pulse, loving God, 
and good, and one another ! 



CHAPTER VI. 

PLEASANT BROTHER JOHN. 

"Ho, ho! I suspected as much; so this fellow Clements has been 
hanging about us at parties, and dropping in here so often, for the sake 
of Miss Maria, ey ?" — For the door had noisily burst open to let in Mr. 
John Dillaway, who under grumbled as above. 

" Dear John, I am so rejoiced to see you ; I am sure it will make you 
as happy as myself, brother, to hear the good news: papa and mamma 

are so kind, and I need not introduce to you my you have 

often met him here, John — Mr. Henry Clements." 

"Sir, your most obedient." The vulgar little purse-proud citizen 
made an impudent sort of distant bow, and looked for all the world like 
a coated Caliban sarcastically cringing to a well-bred Ferdinand. 

Poor Henry felt quite taken aback at such frigid formality ; and dear 
Maria's very heart was in her mouth: but the brother tartly added, "If 
Mr. Clements wishes to see Sir Thomas — that's his knock: he was fol- 
lowing me close behind : I saw him ; but, as I make it a point never to 



264 HEART. 

walk with the governor, perhaps it's as well for you two I dropped in 
first by way of notice, ey?" 

It was a dilemma, certainly — after all that Lady Dillaway had said 
and recommended : fortunately, however, her lord the knight, when the 
street door was opened to him, hastened straightway to his own "study," 
where he had to consult some treatise upon tare and tret, and a recent 
pamphlet upon the undoubted social duty, ^Run for Gold;'' so that 
awkward rencounter was avoided ; and Mr. Clements, taking, up his 
hat, was enabled to accomplish a dignified retreat. 

"Dear John, your manner grieves me; I wish you had been kinder 
to my — to Henry Clements." 

" Oh, you do, do you ? does the governor know of all this? the fellow 's 
a beggar." 

"For shame, John! you shall not call my noble Henry such names: 
of course papa has heard all." 

"And approves of all this spooneying, ey, miss?" • 

"Brother, brother, do be gentler with me: mamma's great kindness 
has smoothed away all objections, and surely you will be glad, John, to 
have at last a brother of your own to love you as I do." 

"Ey? what? another thief to go shares with me when the governor 
cuts up? Thank you, miss, I'd rather be excused. You are quite 
enough, I can tell you, for you make my whole a half; nobody wants a 
third : much obliged to you, though." [Interjections may as well be 
understood.] 

" O, dear brother, you hurt me, indeed you do : I am sure (if it were 
right to say so) I would not wish to live a minute, if poor Maria's death 

could — could make you any happier; — O John, my heart will " 

[Her tears can as readily be understood as his interjections.] 

If a domestic railroad could have been cleverly constructed to Maria's 
chamber from every room in that great house, it would have stood her 
in good stead ; for every day, from some room or other, this poor girl 
of feeling had to rush up stairs in a torrent of grief. Yearning after 
sympathy and love, neither felt nor understood by the minds with whom 
she herded, a trio of worldliness, apathy, and coarse brutality, her bosom 
ached as an empty void : treated with habitual neglect and cold indiffer- 
ence, made various (as occasion might present) by stern rebuke or bitter 
sarcasm, her heart was sore within its cell, and the poor dear child lived 
a life of daily martyrdom, her feelings smitten upon the desecrated altar 
of home by the "foes of her own household." 



PLEASANT BROTHER JOHN. 265 

And not least hostile in the band of those home-foes was this only 
brother, John. Look at him as he stands alone there, muttering after 
her as she ran up stairs, "Plague take the gii'l!" and let me tell you 
what I know of him. 

That thick-set form, with its pock-marked face, imprisons as base a 
spirit as Baal's. He was a chip of the old block, and something more. 
If the father had a heart Avith "gold" written on it, the son had no heart 
at all, but gold was in its place. Thoroughly unscrupulous as to ways 
and means, and simply acting on the phrase " quocunque modo rem," he 
seemed to have neither conscience of evil, nor dread of danger. In two 
words, he was a "bold bad" man, divested equally of fear and feeling. 
The memoirs of his past life hitherto, without controversy very little 
edifying, may be guessed with quite sufficient accuracy for all charac- 
teristic purposes from the coarse, sensual, worldly, and iniquitous result 
now standing for his portraiture before us. We will waste on such a 
type of heartlessness as few words as possible : let his conduct show 
the man. 

Just now, this worthy had risen into high favour with his father : we 
already know why ; he had suddenly got rich on his own account, and 
for that very sufficient reason drew any additional sums he pleased on 
"the governor's." The trick or two, whereat Sir Thomas hinted, and 
which so wise a man would not have blabbed to fools, are worthy of 
record; not merely as illustrative of character, but (in one case at least, 
as we may find hereafter) for the sake of ulterior consequences. 

.Tohn Dillaway's first exploit in the money-making line was a clever 
one. He managed to possess himself of a carrier-pigeon of the Antwerp 
breed, one among a flock kept for stock-jobbing purposes, by a certain 
great capitalist; and he contrived that this trained bird should wlieel 
down among the merchants just at noon one fine day in the Royal 
Exchange. The billet under its wing contained certain cabalistic char- 
acters, and the plain-spoken intelligence, "Louis Philippe est 7norif" In 
a minute after these most revolutionizing news, French funds, then at 
one hundred and twelve, were toppling down below ninety, and our 
prudent John was buying stock in all directions : nay, he even made 
some considerable bargains at eighty-seven. There was a complete 
panic in the market, and wretched was the man who possessed French 
fives. The afternoon's work so beautifully finished, John spent that 
night as true-born Britons are reported to have done before the battle of 
Hastings, rioting in drunken bliss, and panting for the morrow; and 

23 



266 HEART. 

when the morrow came, and the Paris post witli it, I must leave it to 
be understood with what complacency of triumph our enterprising 
stock-jobber hastened to sell again at one hundred and fourteen, pockct- 
incf, in the afrarecrate, a difference of several thousand pounds. It was 
a feat altogether to ravish a delighted father's heart, and no wonder th;\t 
he counted John so great a comfort. 

Trick number two had been at once even more lucrative and more 
dangerous. As a stock-broker, this enterprising Mr. Dillaway had 
peculiar opportunities of investigating closely certain records in the 
office for unclaimed dividends : he had an object in such close inspec- 
tion, and discovered soon that one Mrs. Jane Mackenzie, of Ballyriggan, 
near Belfast, was a considerable proprietor, and had made no claim for 
years. Why should so much money lie idle? Was the woman dead? 
Probably not; for in that case executors or administrators would have 
touched it. Legatees and next of kin are little apt to forget such mat- 
ters. Well, then, if this Mrs. Jane Mackenzie is alive, she must be a 
careless old fool, and we '11 try if we can't kill her on paper, and so 
come in for spoils instead of kith and kin. "Shrewd Jack," as they 
called him in the Alley, chuckled within himself at so feasible a plot. 

Accordingly, in an artful and well-concocted way, which we may 
readily conceive, but it were weary to detail, John Dillaway managed to 
forge a will of Jane Mackenzie aforesaid ; and inducing some dressed-up 
"ladies" of his acquaintance to personate the weeping nieces of deceased 
(doubtless with no lack of Irish witnesses beside, competent to swear to 
any thing), he contrived to pass probate at Doctors' Commons, and get 
twelve thousand two hundred and forty-three pounds, bank annuities trans- 
ferred, as per will, to the two ladies legatees. As the munificent douceur 
of a thousand pounds a-piece had (for the present) stopped the mouths of 
those supposititious nieces, who stipulated for not a farthing more nor less, 
clever John Dillaway a second time had the filial opportunity of rejoicing 
his father's heart by this wholesale money-making. Ten thousand pounds 
bank stock was manifestly another good day's work ; and seeing our John 
had not appeared at all in the transaction, even as the ladies' stock-broker, 
things were made so safe, that the chuckling knight, when he heard all 
this (albeit he did tenderly fy, fy a little at first), was soon induced to 
think "my son Jack" the very best boy and the very cleverest dog in 
Christendom : at once a parent's pride and joy. Yes, Lady Dillaway — 
such a comfort! And the worshipful stationer apostrophized "rich 
Jack" with lips that seemed to smack of Creasy 's Brighton sauce, whilst 



PLEASANT BROTHER JOHN. 267 

his calm spouse appeared to acquiesce in her amiable John's good for- 
tune. The mystified mother little guessed that it was felony. 

This good son's new-born wealth, besides the now liberal paternal 
largess (for his allowance grew larger in proportion as he might seem 
to need it less), of course availed to introduce him to some fashionable 
and estimable circles of society, whither it might not at all times be 
discreet in us to follow him; amongst other places, whether or not the 
Pandemonium in Jermyn street proved to him another gold mine, we 
have not yet heard; but .Tohn Dillaway was often there, the intimate 
friend of many splendid cavaliers who lived upon their industry, familiar 
with a whole rookery of blacklegs, patron of two or three pigeonable 
city sparks, and, on the whole, flusher of money than ever. His quiet 
mother, if she cared about her son at all, and probably she did care 
when her health permitted, might well be apprehensive on the score of 
that increasing wealth which made the father's joy. 

However, with all his prosperity Mr. John as yet professed himself 
by no means satisfied ; he was far too greedy of gain, and ever since he 
had come to man's estate, had amiably longed to be an only child. Not 
that he heeded a monopoly of the parental feelings and affections, nor 
even that he meditated murdering Maria — oh dear, no: rather too trou- 
blesome that, and quite unnecessary ; it would be entirely suflicient if he 
could manage so to influence his father as to cut that superfluous sister 
Maria very short indeed in the matter of cash. With this generous and 
amiable view, he now for a course of sundry years had wliispered, back- 
bitten, and lied ; he had, as occasion offered, taken mean advantages of 
Maria's outspeaking honesty, had set her warm-hearted sayings and 
charitable doings in the falsest lights, and had entirely "mildewed the 
ear" of her listening papa. The knight in truth listened unreluctantly ; 
it was consolation, if not happiness to him, if he could make or find 
excuses for harshness to a being who would not worship wealth ; it 
would be joy and pride, and an honour to his idol, if he should keep 
Maria pretty short of cash, and so make her own its preciousness ; 
triumphant would he feel, as a merely-moneyed man, to see trouble- 
some, obtrusive Heart, with all its win-ways, and whimperings, and 
incomprehensible spirituality, with its sermons and its prayers, bending 
before him "for a bit of bread." Yes, poor loving disinterested Maria 
ran every chance of being disinherited, from the false witness of her 
brother, simply because she gave him antecedent opportunities, by her 
honest likings and dislikings, by her bold rebuke of wrong and open zeal 



263 HEART. 

for right, by her scorn of hypocrisies as to what she did feel, or did not 
feel, and by the unpopular fact that she wore a heart, and refused to be 
the galley-slave of gold. 

"Oh, ho, then!" said our crafty John, "we shall soon set this all riglit 
with our governor; thank you for the chaitce, Miss Maria. If father 
doesn't kick out this Clements, and cut you off with a shilling, he is not 
Sir Thomas, and I am not his son." 



CHAPTER VII. 

MOVIDENCE SEES FIT TO HELP VILLANY. 

"Now that's what I call bones." 

It was a currish image, suggestive of the choicest satisfaction. Let us 
try to discover what good news such an idiosyncrasy as that of John 
Dillaway would be pleased to designate as "bones." He had forthwith 
gone to his father's room as merry at the chance of ousting poor Maria, 
as the heartlessness of avarice could make him ; and omnipresent author- 
ship jotted down the dialogue that follows : 

"So, governor, there's to be a wedding here, I find; when does it 
come off?" 

"Ey? what? a wedding? whose?" 

"Oh, ho! you don't know, ey? I guessed as much: what do you 
think now of our laughing, and crying, and kissing, and praying Miss 
Maria with — 

"Not that beggar Clements? Ey? what? d " &c., &c. 

"Ha, ha, ha, ha! I thought so; why not, governor? Are you an old 
mole, that you haven't seen it these six weeks? Are you stone deaf, 
that all their pretty speeches have been wasted on you? All I can say 
is, that if Mr. and Mrs. Clements an't spliced, it 's pretty well time they 
should be, and — 

Sir Thomas Dillaway rattled out so terrible an oath about Maria's 
disinheritance if she ventured upon a marriage, that even John was stag- 
gered at such a dreadful curse; nevertheless, an instantaneous reflec- 
tion soon caused that curse to be viewed metaphorically as a "bone;" 
and the generous brother cautiously proceeded — 



PROVIDENCE HELPS VILLANY. 269 

" Why, governor, all this is very odd, must say ; when I caught 'em 
kissing up there ten minutes ago, they were sharp enough to swear that 
you knew all about it, and that you were so 'very, very kind.'" 

How is it possible, intelligent reader, to avoid perpetual allusion to an 
oath? We must not pare the lion's claws, and give bad men soft 
speeches : pr'ythee, supply an occasional interjection, and believe that in 
this place Sir Thomas swore most awfully ; then, in a complete phrensy, 
he vowed that he " would turn Maria out of house and home this min- 
ute." This was another "bone," clearly. 

But it was now becoming politic to calm him. Shrewd Jack was 
well aware that Maria would relinquish all, and sacrifice, not merely 
her own heart, but her Henry's too, rather than be guilty of filial diso- 
bedience. All this storming, hopeful as it looked, might still be prema- 
ture, and do no substantial good; nay, if this wrath broke out too soon, 
Maria would at once give way, become more dutiful than ever, and his 
golden chance was gone. No : they were not married yet. Let the 
wedding somehow first take place, and then — ! and then! — for now he 
knew which way the wind blew ; so the scheming youth calmed his rising 
triumphs, and counselled his progenitor as follows: 

"Well, governor, I never saw so green a blade in all my born days. 
Can't you see, now, that it's all cram this, just to put you in spirits, old 
boy, in case of such things happening? It was wicked too of me to 
tease you so — but I 'm so jolly, governor ; such luck in Jermyn street — 
I knew you 'd like a joke served up with such rich sauce as this is, ey ? 
only look !" " It was half a hatful of bank notes raked up at the 
hazai'd table. 

Sir Thomas's gray eyes darted swiftly at the spoil ; often as he had 
warned and scolded Jack about the matter of Jermyn street (for Jack 
was bold enough never to conceal one of his little foibles), the father had 
now nothing to object; for, in his philosophy, the end justified the means. 
With most of this wise world, he looked upon success as in the nature 
of virtue, and failure as the surest sign of vice; accordingly his ire was 
diverted on the moment, and blazed in admiration of son Jack : and that 
estimable creature immediately determined it was wise to speak in tones 
of unwonted affection respecting his sister. 

"Now, governor, I put it to you plump, isn't this hatful enough to 
make a man beside himself, so as not to stick at a white lie or two .' 
Dear Maria there is no more going to become a Mrs. Clements than you 
are; she cut the fellow dead long ago: so mind, that's a tough old bird, 

23* 



270 



HEART. 



vou don't say one word to lier about him; it would be just raking up 
the cinders again, you know, and you might be fool enough to raise a 
flame. No, governor, if it's any consolation to you, that pauper con- 
nection has been all at an end this month ; not but what the beggar 's got 
my mother's ear still, I fancy ; but as to Maria, she detests him. So 
take my advice, and don't tease the poor girl about the .business. Now, 
then, that this is all settled, and now that you're the merrier for that 
silly bit of storming at nothing, just listen: the wedding's my own! 
isn't Jack Dillaway a clever fellow now, to have caught a R-ight Hon- 
ourable Ladyship, with a park in Yorkshire, a palace in Wales, and a 
mansion in Grosvenor square?" 

At this extempore invention, the delighted parent rained so many 
blessings on his progeny, that John knew the tide was turned at once. 
Our ex-lord mayor had high ambitions, dating from the year of glory 
onwards; so that nothing could be more prudent or well-timed that this 
ideal aristocratic connection. Jack was a good fellow, a dear boy ; and 
he added to his apparent amiabilities now by reiterating counsels of 
kindness and silence towards "poor dear sister Maria, whom he had 
been making the scape-goat all this time;" after which done, our stock- 
jobber feigned a pressing engagement v/ith some fashionable friends, 
and left his father to ruminate upon his worth in lonely admiration. 

Well; if that clever and gratuitous lie was not another "bone," I am 
at a loss to know what could be a "bone'' to such a hound: therefore it 
appears that Dillaway had three of them at least to gladden Iiim in soli- 
tude ; and he went on revealing to wonder-stricken angels, and to us, 
the secrets of his crafty soul, as he thus soliloquized : 

"Yes, marry the fools first, and then for spoils at leisure; it won't be 
easy though, she's so consummate filial, and he so bloated up with hon- 
our. They'll never wed, I'm clear, unless the governor's by to bless 
'em ; and as to managing that, and the cutting-adrift scheme too, one kills 
the other. How the deuce to do it? Eh — do I see a light?" 

He did. A light lurid sulphurous gleam upon the midnight of his 
mind seemed to show the way before him, as wisp-fire in a marsh. He 
did see a light, and its character was this : 

Quite aware of his mother's tranquil hopefulness, and that his kind 
good sister was ingenuous as the day, he soon apprehended the state of 
affairs ; and, resolving to increase those misunderstandings on all sides, he 
quickly perceived that he could triumph in the keen Machiavellian policy, 
^'■divide et imperay The plan became more obvious as he calmly 



PROVIDENCE HELPS VILLANY. 271 

thouglit it out. Evidently his first step must be to ingratiate himself with 
both Henry and Maria, as the sympathizing brother, a very easy task 
among such charitable fools : number two should be to persuade them, 
as the mother did, that Sir Thomas, generally a reserved unsocial man 
at home (and that in especial to Maria), was very nervous at the thought 
of losing his dear daughter, and (while he acquiesced in the common fate 
of parents and the usual way of the world) begged that his coming 
bereavement might be obtruded on him as little as possible — Mr. Cle- 
ments always to avoid him, and Maria to hold her tongue : number three, 
to amuse his father all the while by the prospect of his own high alliance, 
so as effectually to hoodwink him from what was going on : and, num- 
ber four, to send him up to Yorkshire a week hence (on some fool's 
errand to inquire after the imaginary countess's imaginary mortgages) 
leaving behind him an autograph epistle (which our John \;ell knew 
how to write), recommending "that the ceremony be performed imme- 
diately and in his absence, to spare his feelings on the spot," mentioning 
"son John as his worthy substitute to give dear Maria awa}^," and 
enclosing them at once his "blessing and a hundred pound note to help 
them on their honey-moon." 

"John Dillaway, if craft be a virtue, thou art an archangel: but if 
Heaven's chief requirement is the heart, thou art very like a devil — 
very. If selfishness deserves the meed of praise, who more honourable 
than thou art? But if a heartless inan can never reach to happinesS; 
I know who will live to curse the hour of Jiis birth, and is doomed to 
perish miserably. 

It was a clever scheme, and had unscrupulous hands to work it. 
Mystified by quiet Lady Dillaway as our lovers had been from the first, 
entirely unsuspicious of all guile, and rejoicing in their brother's mar- 
vellous amiability, never surely were such happy days; always together 
while the knight was at his counting-house, they gladly acquiesced in 
his beautifully paternal nervousness ; it was a delightful trait of character 
in the dear old man ; and a very respectable proof that love is keen- 
eyed enough to believe what it wishes, but is stone-blind to any thing 
that might possibly counteract its hopes. Then again, the mother was a 
close ally ; for having set her quiet heart upon the match, Lady Dillaway 
at once encouraged all John's symyathetic scheme, on the prudent princi- 
ple of getting the young couple inextricably married first, and then obliging 
her lord to be reconciled afterwards to what he could not help. Sir Thomas 
liimself, poor blinkei'ed creature, was full of the most aristocratical and 



272 



HEART. 



wealthy fancies, and only yearned to inspect the acres of his future honour- 
able grand-children. He was, from these fanciful causes, unusually affa- 
ble and indulgent to Maria; spoke so kindly always that she was all but 
dissolving thrice a-day ; and, from his constant reveries about the count- 
ess, appeared perpetually to be brooding over dear Maria's soon approach- 
ing loss. Poor girl ! more than once she had determined to give it all up, 
and make her father happy by serving him still in single blessedness : 
but then, how could she break dear Henry's heart, as well as her own ? 
No, no : they should live very near to Finsbury square, and be in and out 
constantly, and papa should never miss her : how delightful was all this ! 

As for John himself, (our heartless model-man, strange contrast to 
Maria's perfect charity!) he chuckled hugely as his scheme now 
ripened fast. He had long been putting all things in train for the wed- 
ding to-morrow. Every body knew it except Sir Thomas who — vvhat 
between Jack's prudent watchfulness, his habitual counting-house hours, 
his usually unsocial silence, and his now asserted wish for "not one 
word upon the subject," — was at once kept in total ignorance of all ; and 
yet, as ambassadorial John constantly gave out to Clements and Maria, in 
an amiable nervous state of natural acquiescence. Next day, |then, the 
besotted flither was about to be packed post for Yorkshire ; tlie import- 
ant letter, with its enclosed bank note, was already written and sealed, 
as like the governor's hand as possible ; a license had been long ago pro- 
vided, and the clergyman bespoke, by the brotherly officiousness of 
John; neither Henry Clements, who was too delicate, too unsuspecting 
for prudent business-papers, nor Maria, whose heart was never likely 
to have conceived the thought, had even once alluded to a settlement ; 
Lady Dillaway was lying, as her wont was, on her habitual sofa, in 
tranquil ecstasy, at to-morrow morning's wedding : ajid Holy Provi- 
dence, for wise purposes no doubt, had seen fit to aid a villain in his deep- 
laid treacherous designs. 

The Wednesday dawned: Sir Thomas was to be off early, poor man, 
all agog for right honourable acres; and Maria could no longer restrain 
the expression of her glad and grateful feelings. Up she got by six, 
threw herself in her kind dear father's way; and though, to spare his 
feelings, she said not a word about the marriage, prayed him on her 
knees for a blessing. The startled parent, believing all this frantic 
show of feeling was sufficiently to be accounted for by his own long and 
no doubt dangerous journey, blessed her as devoutly as ever he could ; 
and when the carriage drove away, left her in his study, overcome witli 



THE ROGUE'S TRIUMPH. 273 

joy, affection, and admiration of his fine heart, exquisite sensibilities, 
and generous feelings. Than, as a crowning-stone to all the bliss, if 
any lingering doubt existed in the mind of Clements, v/ho had more than 
once expressed dislike at Sir Thomas's silent and unsatisfying sympathy 
— the letter — the letter, whereof kind brother John, seci'etly initiated, 
had some days forewarned them of its probability — that letter, which 
explained at once all a father's kind anxieties, and made up for all his 
cold reserve, was found on Sir Thomas's own table ! How amiable, 
how beautifully sensitive, how liberal too ! Lady Dillaway plumed 
herself in a whispering transport upon her just appreciation of the father's 
better feelings ; a kinder heart jnanifestly never existed than her hus- 
band's, though he did take strange methods of proving it : the brides- 
maids, two daughters of a friend and neighbour, privy to the coming 
mystery three days, approved highly of so unobtrusive an old gentle- 
man: Maria was all pantings, blushings, -weepings, and rejoicings; 
Henry Clements, handsome, pale, and agitated ; perhaps, misgiving too, 
and a little displeased at the father's absence ; however, Mr. John Dilla- 
way gave away the bride with a most piaternal air; and, just as Sir 
Thomas was changing horses at Huntingdon, our innocent lovers were 
indissolubly married. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE EOGUE'S TRIUMPH. 

Never was there such a happy couple; nor a more auspicious day. 
Away they went, in deep delight, too joyful to be merry, in a holy trans- 
port of affection, and its dearest hope fulfilled. They seemed to be in 
love with all the world, for every thing around them wore a lustre of 
deliciousness : and when the smoking posters left them at Salt hill, and 
that well-matched husband and wife sat down to their first boiled fowl, 
it would probably be a bathos to allude to angelic bliss ; but they never- 
theless were, and knew they were, the happiest of mortals. If any 
thing could add to Henry's self-complacency at that moment, it was the 
recollection of his own truly disinterested conduct; for only yesterday 
he had transferred all his little property to that kind and brotherly fel- 
low John Dillaway, in trust for Maria Clements, should any possible 
S 



274 HEART. 

reverse of fortune affect her father's or his own prosperity. Yes ; and 
John had been so wise as to make the two hundred a-year already a third 
more, by investing (as he said) what had been a few thousands of three 
per cents, in some capital "independent" bank shares of Australasia — 
safe as a mountain, and productive as a valley. 

All this appeared very prosperous and pleasant : but we of the ini- 
tiated into the secrets of character, may reasonably apprehend that 
Henry's little all would have been safer any where than in Dillaway's 
possession: and "possession," I am sorry to declare, is a word used 
advisedly ; for Mr. John required a largish floating capital to enable him to 
go to the desperate lengths he did at hazard and rouge-et-noir ; and I am 
afraid that if Mr. or Mrs. Clements were to receive any of those so-called 
Austral dividends, they would only have been taking three hundred 
pounds a-year out of their principal moneys in John's immacu- 
late keeping. 

Leaving then those wedded lovers to their honey-moon of joy, and 
shrewd Jack gloating not merely over the full success of his nefarious 
plan, but also over this unexpected acquisition of poor Clement's few 
thousands, let us return to Sir Thomas — or, to be quite accurate, let us 
return with him. 

In high dudgeon, full of fire and fury, back rushed the knight, sore 
under the sense of having been made an April-fool of in July ; for no 
one in the place whereto he went, had ever heard of a widow'd Count- 
ess of Lancing ; and her ladyship's acres, if any where at all, were 
undoubtedly not in the North Riding. But clever son John, meeting his 
indignant father on the threshold, soon made all that right by a word. 

"Well, if ever! why, stupid, I said Diddlington, not Darlington." 

Into the accuracy of this distinction it is needless to inquire : and then 
the ingenuous youth went on to observe — 

"But all's right as it is now; you may as well not have seen the 
property, and better, too, as things have turned out roughly, governor: 
the match is off, and you may well congratulate me. Such an escape 
— I just discovered it, and was barely in time: you hadn't been gone 
two hours when I found it all out, through a clever devil of a lawyer, 
who was hired by my father's son to look into incumbrances, and keep 
a sharp look-out for a mutual settlement; that old harridan of a lady- 
ship is over head and ears in debt; and, it seems, I was to have paid all 
straight, or i. e. you, governor, ey? As to tlie Yorkshire acres, the old 
woman had but a life interest in the mere bit that wasn't deeply mort- 



THE ROGUE'S TRIUMPH. 275 

gaged — and not a very long life either, seeing she is seventy. So, bless 
your clever boy again, old governor, he 's free." 

The knight had nothing to object : Jack's ready lie had plenty of rea- 
sons in it : and so he blessed his clever boy again. 

"But I say, governor, I rather think that you've astonished us all: 
what on earth made you turn so soft of a sudden, and write that letter?" 

"What letter? ey? what?" — Sir Thomas might well inquire. 

" That 's a good joke, governor — you keep it up to the last, I see ; what 
a close old fde it is ! What letter ? why, the letter you wrote to Maria 
and her lord, telling them to marry." 

"Marry? ey? what, Maria? what — what is it all?" The* poor old 
man was thoroughly bewildered. 

" Well done, governor — bravo ! you can carry it off as cleverly as if 
you were an actor; do you mean to say now you didn't leave a letter 
behind you here upon your table, bidding Maria marry in your 
absence to spare your paternal feelings (kind old boy, it is, too!) and 
enclosing them one hundred pounds for the honey-moon?" 

The mystified father made some inarticulate expression of ignorant 
amazement, and our stock-jobber went on : 

"So of course they're married and off — Mr. and Mrs. Cle " 

A whirlwind of disastrous imprecations cut all short: and then in a 
voice choked with passion he gasped out — 

"But — but are they married — are they married? how do you know 
it? can't we catch 'em first, ey? what!" 

"How do I know it? that's a good un now, father, when I had it 
under your hand to give the girl away myself instead of you. Do you 
mean to say you didn't write that letter?" 

" Boy, 1 tell you, I 've written nothing — I knov/ nothing ; you speak 
in riddles." 

" Well then, governor, if I do, I '11 to guess 'em : I begin to see how 
it was all brought about — but they did it cleverly too, and were quite too 
many for me. Only listen : that fellow Clements, ay, and Miss Maria 
too (artful minx, I know her), must have forged a letter as if from you 
to get poor fools, me and my mother, to see 'em spliced, while you were 
tooling to Yorkshire." 

"Impossible— ey? what? I '11— I '11— I '11— ' 

"Now, governor, don't stand there doing nothing but denying all I 
say ; only you go yourself, and ask my mother if she didn't see the letter — 
if they didn't marry upon it, and if that precious sister of mine doesn't 



276 HEART. 

richly deserve every thing she '11 some day get from her affectionate, her 
excellent, her ill-used father?" 

lago's self, or his master, smooth-tongued Belial, could not have man- 
aged matters better. 

The incredulous knight, scarcely able to discover how far it might not 
still be all a joke, especially after his Yorkshire expedition, rushed up 
to Lady Dillaway; on her usual sofa, quietly knitting, and thinking of 
her Maria's second day of happiness. 

"So, ma'am — ey? what? is it true? are they married? is it true? 
married — ey? what?" 

"Certainly, Thomas, they were only too glad, and I will add, so was 
I, to get your kind — " 

"Mine? I give leave? ey? what? Madam, we're cheated, fooled — 
I never wrote any letter." 

" Most astonishing ; I saw it myself, Thomas, your own hand ; and 
our dear John too." 

"Ay, ay — he sees through it all, and so do I now — ey? what? that 
precious pair of rogues forged it! Now, ma'am, what don't they 
deserve, I should like to know?" 

It was quite a blow, and a very hard one, to the poor tranquil mother. 
Could her dear Maria really have been so base, and that noble-looking 
Henry too? how di-eadfully deceived in them, if this proved true! And 
how could she think it false ? A letter contrived to expedite their mar- 
riage in the father's casual absence, which no one could have thought 
of writing but Sir Thomas himself, or the impatient lovers. So poor 
Lady Dillaway could only fall a-crying very miserably ; whereupon 
her husband more than half suspected her of being an accomplice in 
the despicable plot. 

"Now then, ma'am, I 'm determined : as they are married, the thing's 
at an end ; we can't untie that knot — but, once tied, I 've done with the 
girl; they may starve, for any help they'll get of me: and as for you, 
mum, give 'em money at your peril ; stay, to make sure of it, Lady Dill- 
away, I shall stint you to whatever you choose to ask me for out of my 
own pocket; never draw another cheque on Jones's, do you hear? ey? 
what? for your cheques shall not be honoured, ma'am. And now, from 
this hour, you and I have only one child, John. 

" Oh, Thomas — Thomas ! be merciful to poor Maria ! indeed, she 
was deceived; she believed it all — poor Maria!" 

"Ma'am, never mention that woman again — ey? what? deceived? 



THE ROGUE'S TRIUMPH. 277 

Yes, she deceived you and me, and John, and all. Wicked wretch ! 
and all to marry a beggar ! Well, ma'am, there 's one comfort left ; the 
fellow married her for money, and he 's caught in his own trap ; never 
a penny of mine shall either of them see. Henceforth, Lady Dillaway, 
we have no daughter ; dear John is the only child left us for old age." 

In spite of himself, of wrath, and disappointment, the father spoke in 
a moved and broken manner; and his weeping wife attempted to explain, 
console, and soothe him ; but all in vain — he was inexorable and invet- 
erate against those mean deceivers. To say truth, the poor mother was 
staggered too, especially when her managing son set all the matter in what 
he stated to be the right light; for he had, the whole business through, 
whispered so separately to each, and had seemed to say so little openly 
(making his mother believe that his sister told him of the coming letter, 
and a choice variety of other embellishments), that he was now looked 
upon as the very martyr to roguish plotting, in having been induced to 
give away his sister. Excellent, mistaken John ! 

And forthwith John became installed sole heir, proving the most dutiful 
of sons: how glibly would he tell them any sort of welcome news, 
original or selected ; how many anecdotes could he invent to prove his 
own merits and certain other folks' deficiencies; how amiably would he 
fetch and carry slippers and smelling-bottles, and write notes, and read 
newspapers, and make himself every thing by turns {he devoutly hoped 
it would be nothing long) to his poor dear parents, as became an only 
child! It was quite affecting — and both father and mother, softened in 
spite of themselves at the loss of that Maria, often would talk over the 
new-found virtues of their most exemplary son. His character came 
out now with five-fold lustre when contrasted with his former usual 
ruggedness : no widow ever had a one sick child more tender, more 
considerate, more dutiful, than rude Jack Dillaway. 

He gained his end ; saw the new will signed ; earwigged the lawyer ; 
and kept a copy of it. 



278 HEART. 

CHAPTER IX. 

FALSE- WITNESS KILLS A MOTHER, AND WOULD 'WILLINGLY STARVE A SISTER. 

Day by day, letters, doubtless full of happiness and Heart, were left 
by the promiscuous and undiscerning postman at the house in Finsbury 
square, from our excellent calumniated couple; but, seeing that there 
were always two sieves waiting ready to sift it before it came to Lady 
Dillaway's turn — to wit, John in the hall, and Sir Thomas in his study, 
it came to pass that every letter with those malefactors' hand and seal 
on it got burnt instanter, and unopened. 

How many troubles might mankind be spared if they would only stop 
to hear each other's explanations! How many ailments, both of body 
and soul, if explanations only came more frequently and freely ! Mel- 
ancholy from that dreadful doubt, and all these cold delays, viewing her 
daughter as a criminal, the husband as a swindler, and all this long 
course of silence as very, very heartless and seemingly conclusive of 
their guilt, the poor mother sickened fast upon her couch : she had for 
years always been an invalid, wan and wo-begone, living upon ether, 
gum, and chicken-broth ; but her w^hite skin now grew whiter, her faint 
voice fainter, the energies of life in her debilitated frame weaker than 
ever; it was no mere hypochondria, or other fanciful malady: her calm 
heart seemed to be dying down within her, as a plant that has earth- 
grubs gnawing at its root — she grew very ill. Days, weeks of silence — ■ 
her heart was sick with hope deferred. How could Maria, with all 
her seeming warmth, treat her with such utter negligence? But now 
the honey-moon was coming to an end : they must call and see her some 
day again, surely ; how strangely unkind not to answer those motherly 
and anxious letters, sent to their first known stage. Salt hill, and there- 
after to be forwarded. 

O, cold continued crime ! Bad man, bad man, thy mother's own 
hand-writing shall plead against thee at the last dread day. For those 
coveted letters of affection, often sent on both those loving parts, had 
been regularly and ruthlessly intercepted, opened, mocked, and burnt! 
How could the man have stood case-proof against those letters — hia 
mother's anxious outbursts of affection towards a lost, an innocent, a 
calumniated sister ? For selfishness had dried up in that hard and wily 
man all the milk of human kindness. 



FALSE-WITNESS KILLS A MOTHER, 279 

And our loving pair, upon their travels, were as much hurt and sur- 
prised at this long silence as poor Lady Dillaway herself: it was most 
mysterious, inexplicable. The only letter they had received ever since 
they had left home was one — only one, from John, which had frightened 
them exceedingly. Some practical joker (the bridesmaid's brother was 
suspected), by way of giving Maria a present on her approaching wed- 
ding, as it would seem, had cleverly imitated her father's hand-writing, 
and — that letter was a forgery ! to every body's great amazement. 
Nobody could, according to his own account, be kinder than John, who 
had done more than mortal things to appease his father; but the old 
man remained implacable. It was a meanly-contrived clandestine 
match, he said ; and he never intended to set eyes on them again ! As 
for John, he in that letter had strongly counselled them to keep away, 
and trust to him for bringing his father round. In the midst of their 
terrible dilemma, kind brother John seemed as an angel sent by Heaven 
to assist them. 

Dear children of affection and calamity ! how innocently did they 
walk into the snare ; and how closely doth the wicked man dra"' his 
toils around them. Who can accuse them of any wrong (the hopeful- 
ness of love considered) in point either of honour or duty ? And shall 
they not be righted at the last? It may be so — it shall be so: but Holy 
Providence hath purposes of good in plunging those twin wedded hearts 
deep beneath the billows of earthly destitution. The wicked must pros- 
per for a while, in this as in a million other cases, and the good for their 
season struggle with adversity ; that the one may be destroyed for ever, 
and the others may add to this world's wealth the incalculable riches 
of another. 

They had spent the few first weeks of marriage among the pleasant 
lakes and hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland, wandering together, 
in delightful interchange of thought, from glen to glen, from tairn to 
tairn, all about Ambleside, Helvellyn, and Lodore, Ullswater, Saddle- 
back, and Schiddaw. Maria's ever-flickering smile seemed to throw a 
sun-beam over the darkest moor, even in those darkest hours of doubt, 
heart-sickening anxiety, and grief at the neglect which they experienced ; 
while Heniy's well-informed good sense not only availed to cheer the 
sad Maria, but made every rock a point of interest, and showed every 
little flower a miracle of wisdom. There were hundreds of extempo- 
raneous " lover's seats," where they had " rested, to be thankful " for the 
past, joyful for the present, and hopeful for the future ; and every ram- 



280 



HEART. 



ble that they took might deservedly take the name, style, and title of a 
"lover's walk !" Happy times — happy times! but still there might be 
happier ; yes, and happiest, too, they seemed to whisper, if ever they 
should have a merry little nursery of prattling boys and girls! But I 
am not so entirely in the confidence of those young h\ks as to be certain 
about what they seemed to whisper: in that pretty prattling sentence 
were they not getting a little beyond the honey-moon? Yes — yes, young 
Hymen is too full of new-found pleasure to heed those holier joys of 
calm old marriage; for wedded love is as a coil of line, lengthening 
with the lapse of years, fitted and intended, day after day, to be contin- 
ually sounding a lower and a lower deep in the ocean of happiness. 

Returned to town, it was the immediate care of our fond, confused, and 
unfortunate young couple to call at the old house in Finsbury square; 
where, to their great dismay and miser)'-, they encountered a formal stand- 
ing order for their non-admission. The domestics were new, had been 
strictly warned against the name of Clements, and, in effect, were creatures 
of the worthy John. It was a deplorable business ; they did not know what 
to think, nor how to act. Letters left at the door, couched in whatever 
terms of humility, kindliness, and just excuse, were equally unavailing; 
for the Cerberus there was too well sopped by pleasant brother John ever 
to deliver them to any one but him. It was entirely hopeless — extraordi- 
nary — a most wretched state of things. What were they to do ? The 
only practicable mode of getting at Sir Thomas, and, therefore, at some 
explanation of these mysteries, was obviously to watch for him, and 
meet him in the street. As for Lady Dillaway, she was very ill, and 
kept her chamber, which was as resolutely guarded from incursion or 
excursion as Danae's herself — yea, more so, for gold was added to her 
guards : Sir Thomas, going to and from his counting-house, appeared to 
be the only weak point in the enemy's fortifications. 

Poor old man! he was, or thought he was, harder, colder, more invet- 
erate than ever: and his duteous son John rarely let him venture out 
alone, for fear of some such meeting, casual or intended. Accordingly, 
one day when the Clements and the Dillaways mutually spied each 
other afar off", and a junction seemed inevitable, John's promptitude bade 
his father (generously as it looked, for paternal peace of mind's sake) 
return a few paces, get into a cab, and so slip home, the while he val- 
iantly stepped forward to meet the enemy. 

"Mr. Clements! my father (I grieve to say) will hear no reason, nor 
any excuse whatever; he totally refuses to see you or Mrs. Clements." 



FALSE-WITNESS KILLS A MOTHER. 281 

"O, dearest John! what have I done — what has Henry done, that 
papa, and you, and dear mamma, should all be so unkind to us?" 

"You have married, Mrs. Clements, contrary to your father's wish 
and knowledge: and he has -cast you off — I must say — deservedly." 

"Brother, brother! you know I was deceived, and Henry too. This 
is cruel, most cruel: let me see my beloved father but one moment!" 

"His commands are to the contrary, madam; and I at least obey 
them. Flenceforth you are a stranger to us all." 

The poor broken-hearted girl fell into her husband's arms, stone-white : 
but her hard brother, making no account whatever of all that show of 
feeling, only took the trouble quietly to address Henry Clements. "Mis- 
fortunes never come single, they say ; it is no fault of mine if the proverb 
hits Mr. Henry Clements. I am sorry to have to tell you, sir, that the 
Austral Independent bank has stopped payment, and is not expected to 
refund to its depositors or shareholders one penny in the pound." 

" Impossible, Mr. Dillaway ! You answered for its stability yourself: 
and the proposition came originally from you. I hope surely, surely, 
you may have been misinformed of these bad news." 

"It is true, sir — too true for you: the wisest man on 'change is often 
out of reckoning. I have nothing now of yours in my hands, sir: you 
are aware that no writings passed between us." 

"Great Heaven! be just and merciful! Are we, then, to be utterly 
ruined?" 

"Really, sir, you know your own affairs better than I can. — Your 
servant, Mr. Clements." 

O, hard and wicked heart! — what will not sucli a miscreant do for 
money ? Nothing, I am clear, but the cowardly fear of discovery pre- 
vents John Dillaway from becoming a positive parricide by very arsenic 
or razor, so as to grasp his cheated father's will and wealth. And this 
assertion will appear not in the least uncharitable, when the reader is 
in this place reminded that Henry Clements's own little property had 
never been Australized at all, but was still safe and snug in the coffers 
of crafty John. Jermyn street — or the sharpers congregated there — 
had drained him very considerably; all his own ill-got gains had been 
gradually raked away by the croupier at the gaming-table; and unsus- 
pecting Henry's little trust-fund was to be the next bank on which the 
brother played. 

Poor Henry and Maria! What will they do? where will they go? 
how will they live? Hard questions all, not to be answered in a hurry. 

24* 



282 



HEART. 



We shall see. There was one comfort, though, amidst all their mis- 
ery; — they did not find the adage a true one, which alludes to poverty 
coming in at the door, and love flying out of the window ; for they 
never loved each other more deeply — more devotedly — than when daily 
bread was growing a scarcity, and daily life almost a burden. But we 
are anticipating. 

And how fared the parents all this while? was the erring daughter 
entirely forgotten? No, no. Son John, indeed, took good care to hinder 
any amicable feelings of relapse to intrude upon his father's resolution. 
But the old man was not easy, nevertheless ; often thought of poor Maria ; 
and could not clearly make out who had forged the letter. Had it not 
been for that wicked brother John, a meeting — -an explanation — a recon- 
ciliation — would undoubtedly have taken place : but he was shrewd 
enough to keep them asunder, and did not take much to heart his 
father's altered spirits and breaking state of health : his will and wealth 
were seemingly all the nearer. 

And what of that poor stricken mother? Wasted to a shadow, feverish 
and weak, she lay for weeks, counting the dreary hours, till she heard of 
dear, though unnatural, Maria. Oh ! the heartless caitiff", John ! will he 
thus watch his mother die by inches, when one true word from his lips 
could restore her to tranquillity and health ? Yes, he would — he did — 
the wretch! She gradually pined — waned — wasted; the candle of her 
life burnt down into the hollow socket — glimmering awhile — flared and 
reeled, and then — one night, quietly and suddenly — went out! She 
entered on the world of spirits, where all secrets show revealed ; and 
there she read, almost before she died — whilst yet the black curtain of 
eternity was gradually rising to receive her — the innocence of good 
Maria, and the deep-stained villany of John. Her last words — uttered 
supernaturally from her quiescence, with the fervour of a visionary 
whose ken is more than mortal — were "Look, look, Thomas! — beware 
of John. O poor, poor innocent outcast! — O rich, rich heart of love — ■ 
Maria! my Mari — a — !" 



HOW TO HELP ONE'S SELF. 283 



CHAPTER X. 

HOW TO HELP ONE'S SELF. 

Where then did they live, and how — that noble and calumniated 
couple? They had done no wrong, nor even, as it seems to us, the 
semblance of wrong, unless it be by having acquiesced in the foolish- 
ness of secresy, and thus aided the contrivance of false witness ; for 
aught else, their only social error had been lack of business caution 
among business men. Feeling generously themselves, they gave others 
credit for the like good feeling ; acting upon honourable impulse, they 
believed that other men would act so too. Heart was the hindrance in 
their way ; — too much sensitiveness towards all about them ; too swift a 
surrender of the judgment to the affections : too imprudent a reliance 
upon other men of the world ; though, when they trusted to a father's 
love, and a brother's honesty, prudence herself might have almost been 
dispensed with. Machinations of the wicked and the shrewd hemmed 
them in to their un-doing : and really, they, children more or less of 
affluent homes, born and bred in plenty, who had moved all their lives 
long in circles of comparative wealth and wastefulness, now seemed 
likely to come to the galling want of necessary sustenance. Was it 
not to teach them deeper feeling for the poor, if ever God again should 
give them riches? Was it not, by poverty, to try those hearts which 
had passed so blamelessly through all the ordeals and temptations of 
wealth, in order that they worthily might wear the double crown given 
only to such as remain unhardened by prosperity, unembittered by 
adversity? Was. it not to discipline our warm Maria's love, and to 
chasten her Henry's very gentlemanly pride into the due Christian pro- 
portions — self-respect with self-humiliation? Was it not, chiefest and 
best, to school their hearts for heaven, and, by feeding them on miseries 
and wrongs a little while, to fix their affections on things above rather 
than on things of this world? Yes: Providence has many ends in view, 
and they all tend consistently to one great focus — the ultimate advantage 
of the good by means of the confusion of the wicked. 

Meanwhile came trouble on apace. Henry Clements justly felt 
aggrieved, insulted ; and the sentiment of pride, improper only from 
excess, determined him to make no more advances : all that man could 



284 HEART. 

do, that is, which a gentleman ought to do, he had done ; but letters and 
visits proved equally unavailing. He had come to the resolution that 
he would make no more efforts himself, nor scarcely let Maria make 
any. As for her, poor soul! she was now in grievous tribulation, with 
sad, sufficient reason for it too; seeing that, in addition to her father's 
anger, still protracted — in addition to that vile forgery imputed to her 
craft, and whereof she had been made the guilty victim — in addition to 
their own soon pressing money -wants, and that heartless fraud of John's 
against her husband's little all (though she counted of it only as a luck- 
less speculation) — she had just become acquainted, through the public 
prints, of her dear good mother's death, even before she had heard of 
any illness. What bitter pangs were there for her, poor child ! That 
she should have lost that mother just then, without forgiveness, without 
blessing — whilst all was unexplained, and their whole conduct of affec- 
tions without guile, wore the hideous mask of base, undutiful contrivance ! 
Cheer up, Maria ; cheer up ! only in this bad world can innocence be 
sullied with a doubt : cheer up ! the spirit of that mother whom you 
loved on earth knows it well already; learned it while yet she was 
leaving the body of her death: cheer up! she is still near you both — 
dear children of affliction and affection ! and God has commissioned her 
for good to be your ministering angel. 

With reference to means of living, they appeared limited at once to a 
little ready money, and a few personal chattels and trinkets ; without so 
much as one pound of capital to back the young house-keepers, or a 
shilling's-worth of interest or dividend or earnings coming in for weekly 
bills. Clements had been utterly confounded in all his economical 
arrangements by that sudden bitter breach of trust ; and, albeit (as we 
have hinted), his aim in marriage was not money ; still, without much of 
worldly calculation, he might prudently have looked for some provision on 
Maria's part at least equal to his own : in fact, the fond young couple had 
reasonably set their hearts upon that golden mean — four hundred a-year 
to begin with. Now, however, by two fell swoops — brother John's dis- 
honesty and Sir Thomas's resolve of disinheritance — all this rational 
and moderate expectation had been dashed to atoms; and the cottage of 
contented competence appeared but as a castle in the clouds — a mere 
airy matter of undiluted moonshine. Thus, when that happiest of honey- 
moons had dwindled down the hundred-pound bank-note (shrewd John's 
well-expended bait) to the fractional part of a ten, and our newly-mar- 
ried pair came to put together their united resources, wherewithal to 



HOW TO HELP ONE'S SELF. 285 

travel through the world, they could muster but very little : — consid- 
erino-, too, the future, and the promise of an early increase to provide 
for, forty-seven pounds was not quite a fortune ; and a few articles of 
jewellery did not much increase it. 

We need not imagine that Henry calmly acquiesced without a struggle 
in the roguish fraud which had impoverished him; but, notwithstanding 
all his best endeavours, he found, to his dismay, that the case was irre- 
mediable : the transfer-books, indeed, were evidence ; and equity would 
give credit for the trust: but that the "Independent bank" had failed 
was a simple fact ; and so long as John stood ready to swear he had 
invested in it, there was an end to the business. Be sure, shrewd Jack 
was not likely to leave any thing dubious or unsatisfactory in the affair. 
Austral papers were easily got at now, cheap as whitey-brown ; and for 
any help the law could give him, poor Henry Clements might as well 
engage the wind-raising services of a Lapland witch. 

He must put his shoulder to the wheel without delay; manifestly, his 
profession of the law, however unlucrative till now, must be the mighty 
lever that should raise him quickly to the summit of opulence and fame : 
and he vigorously set to work, as the briefless are forced to do, inditing 
a new law-book, which should lift him high in honour with those mag- 
nates on the bench ; being, as he was, a court-counsel, not a chamber 
one, an eloquent pleader too (if the world would only give him a hearing), 
he unluckily took for his thesis the questionable ^Doctrine of Defence;^ 
combating magnanimously on the loftiest moral grounds all manner of 
received opinions, time-honoured fictions, legitimated quibbles, and other 
things which (as he was pleased to put it) " render the majesty of the 
law ridiculous to the ears of common sense, and iniquitous in the sight 
of Christian judgment." Rashj^outh! forensic Quixote ! better had you 
plodded on, without this extra industry and skill, in the hopeless idleness 
and solitude of your Temple garret — better had you burnt your wig and 
gown outright, with all the airy briefs to come that fluttered round them, 
than have owned yourself the author of that heretical piece of moral 
mawkishness — ' The Doctrine of Defence, by Henry Clements.' 

He had with difficulty found a publisher — a chilling incident enough 
in itself, considering an author's feelings for his book-child ; and when 
found, the scarcely satisfactory arrangement was insisted on-, of mutual 
participation in profit and loss : in other parlance, the bookseller pocket- 
ing the first, and the author unpocketing the second. Thus it came to 
pass, that after three months' toil and enormous collation of cases — after 



286 HEART. 

extravagant indulgence of the most ardent hopes — glory, good, and gold, 
consequent instantaneously on this happy publication — after reasonably 
expecting that judges would quote it in their ermine, and sergeants con- 
suit it in their silk — that London would be startled by the event from the 
humdrum of its ordinary routine — and the wondering world applaud the 
name of Henry Clements — O, heart-sickening reality! what was the 
result of his exertions? 

"So, that puppy Clements has taken upon himself to put us all to 

school about whom we may defend, and how, I see Hang the fellow's 

impudence !" grunted a fat Old Bailey counsel to his peers, well aware 
that the luckless author sat nervously within ear-shot. 

"I know whose junior that modest swain shall never be;" simpered 
Sergeant Tiffin. 

"The fellow's done for himself," was the simultaneous verdict of a 
well-wigged band of brothers. And what else they might have added 
in their charity poor Clements never knew, for he crept away to his 
garret, stricken with disappointment. There he must encounter other 
trials of the heart: two or three reviews and newspapers lay upon his 
table, just sent in by the bookseller, as per order; for they contained, in 
spirit-stirring print, notices of ' Clements on Defence.^ Unluckily for his 
present peace of mind, poor fellow, the periodicals in question were none 
of the humaner sort; no kindly encouraging 'Literary Register,^ no soft- 
spoken ''Courtier,'' no patient ''Investigator,'' no generously-indulgent 
' Critical Gazette ;' these more amiable journals would be slower in the 
field — some six weeks hence, perhaps, creeping on with philanthropic 
sloth : but fiercer prints, which dart hebdomadal wrath at every tremb- 
ling seeker of their parsimonious praise, had whipt up their malice to 
deliver the first swift blow against our hapless neophyte in print. Thus, 
when, with nervous preboding, Henry took up the ' Watchman,'' in eager 
hope for favour to his poor dear book, he turned quite sick at heart to find 
the lying verdict run as follows, though the small type in which it spake 
was a comfort too : 

"A careless compilation of insignificant cases, clumsily thrown 
together, and calculated to set its author high indeed upon the rolls of 
fame ; proving to the world that a Mr. Henry Clements can reason very 
feebly ; tliat his premises are habitually false ; and that presumptuous 
preaching is the natural accompaniment of extreme ignorance." 

By all that worries man, but this was too bad: "careless?" — every 
word had been a care to him : "clumsy?" — in composition it was Addi- 



HOW TO HELP ONE'S SELF. 287 

son's own self: "feeble?" — if he was good for any thing, he was good 
for logic : " false ?" — not one premise but stood on adamant, not one con- 
clusion but it was fixed as fate: "presumptuous?" — it was bold and 
masculine, certainly, but humble too ; here and there almost deferential : 
"ignorant?" — ye powers that live in looks, testify by thousands how Cle- 
ments had been studying ! — And yet this most lying sentence, a congeries 
or sorites of untruths, hastily penned by some dyspeptic scribe, who per- 
haps had barely dipped into the book, was at the moment circulating in 
every library of the kingdom, proclaiming our poor barrister a fool ! 

O, thou watchful scribe, forbear! for it is cowardly — they cannot 
smite again : forbear ! for it is cruel — the hearts of wife and mother 
and lover ache upon your idle words: forbear! it is unreasonable — for 
often-times a word would prove that Rhadamanthus' self is wrong : for- 
bear, calumnious scribe! and heed the harms you do, when you rob 
some poor struggler of his character for sense, and make the bread of 
the hungry to fail. 

*77ie Corinthian,'' another snarling watch-dog in the courts of the 
temple of Fame, followed instinctively the same injurious wake: it was 
a leisurely sarcastic anatomization, quite enough to blight any young 
candidate's prospects, supposing that mankind respected such a verdict ; 
if not to make him cut his throat, granting that the victim should be 
sensitive as Keats. The generous review in question may be judged 
of by its first line and last sentence ; as Hercules from his advancing 
foot, or Cuvier's Megatherium from the relics of its great toe. Thus it 
commenced : 

"When a disappointed man, intolerant of fortune," &c., &c., and it 
wound up many stinging observations with this grateful climax following : 

" We trust we have now said enough to prove that if a man will be 
bold enough to 'depreciate censure,' — will attack what he is pleased to 
consider abuses, however countenanced by high authority — and will 
obtrude his literary eloquence into our solemn courts of law, he deserves 
— what does he not deserve ? — to be addressed henceforth by a name 
suggestive at once of ignorance, presumption, and conceit, as Mr. Henry 
Clements." 

Now, will it be believed that a trivial error of the press mainly con- 
duced to occasion this hostility? Our poor author had been weak 
enough to "deprecate censure" in his penny-wise humility, and the 
printer had negatived his meaning as above : '•'•hinc ilia, lachrymce.'" Oh, 
but how the ragged tooth of calumny gnawed his very heart! 



288 HEART. 

' The Legal Recorder ' was another of those early unfavourables ; 
being as a matter of course adverse too, and not very disinterestedly 
either : for it played the exalted part of pet puffer to a rival publisher, who 
wanted no other reason for condemning this book of Mr. Clements than 
that it came from the legal officina of an opponent in his trade. There 
was another paper or two, but Clements felt so utterly disheartened that 
he did not dare to look at them. I wish he had ; they would have com- 
forted him, pouring balm upon his wounded pride by their kind and 
cordial praises: but ill-luck ruled the hour, so he burnt them forthwith, 
and lost much literary comforting. 

To sauce up all this pleasantry with a smack of concreted pleasure 
itself, the last and only remaining document upon the table was a civil 
note from Mr. Wormwood, publisher and bookseller, enclosing the fol- 
lowing items with his compliments : 

To 500 copies ' Doctrine of Defence; . . £124 3 

To advertising ditto, ..... 25 

To 10 per cent, on sales, &c. 

Supplied to author, 12 copies, .... &c. 
Given to periodicals for review, 15 copies, . . &c. 

Against all which was the solitary offset of "three copies sold ;" leaving as 
our Henry's share of now certain loss a matter of eighty pounds : which, 
between ourselves, was only a very little more than the whole cost of 
that untoward publication. Mr. Wormwood hoped to hear from Mr. 
Clements at his earliest convenience, as a certain sum was to be made 
up on a certain day, and the book-trade never had been at a lower ebb, 
and prompt payment would be esteemed a great accommodation, and — 
all that stereotyped sort of thing. 

Poor Clements — reviled author, ruined lawyer, almost reckless wight 
— here was an extinguisher indeed to the morning's brilliant hopes! 
What an overwhelming debt to that ill-used couple in their altered cir- 
cumstances! How entirely by his own strong effort had he swamped 
his legal expectations ! Just as a man who cannot swim splashes him- 
self into certain suffocation ; whereas, if he would but lie quite still, he 
was certain to have floated on as safe as cork. 

Well : to cut a long story short, our unlucky author found that he 
must pay, and pay forthwith, or incur a lawyer's bill for his debt to Mr. 
Wormwood : so he gave up his Temple garret, sold his books, nicknacks, 
and superfluous habiliments, added to the proceeds their forty pounds of 
capital, and a neck-chain of Maria's; and, at tremendous sacrifices, 



FRAUD CUTS HIS FINGERS. 289 

found himself once more out of danger, because out of debt. But it 
was a bad prospect truly for the future — ay, and for the present too ; a 
few pounds left would soon be gone — and then dear Maria's confmemciit 
was approaching, and a hundred wants and needs, little and great : 
accordingly, they made all haste to get rid of their suburban dwelling 
in the City Road, collected their few valuables remaining, and reti*eated 
with all economical speed to a humble lodging in a cheap back street at 
Islington. 

That little parlor was a palace of love : in the midst of her deep 
sorrow, sweet Maria never failed of her amiable charities — nay, she 
was even cheerful, hopeful — happy, and rendering happy : a thousand 
times a day had Henry cause to bless his "wedded angel." And, 
showing his love by more than words, he resolutely set about another 
literary enterprise, anonymous this time for very fear's sake ; but Provi- 
dence saw fit to bless his efforts with success. He wrote a tragedy, a 
clever and a good one too ; though ' The Watchmmi ' did sneer about 
"modern Shakspeares," and ' Tlie Corinthian,^ pouncing on some trifling 
fault, pounded it with would-be giant force : nevertheless, for it was a 
famous English theme, he luckily got them to accept it at the Haymar- 
ket, and '■ Boadicea^ drew full houses; so the author had his due ninth 
night, and pocketed, instead of fame (for he grimly kept his secret) 
enough to enable him to print his tragedy for private satisfaction ; and 
that piece of vanity accomplished, he still found himself seven pounds 
before-hand with the world. 



CHAPTER XI. 

FRAUD CUTS fflS FINGERS WITH HIS OWN EDGED TOOLS. 

Unpleasant as it is to feel obliged to be the usher of ill company, I 
must now introduce to the fastidious public a brace of characters any 
thing but reputable. It were possible indeed to slur them over with a 
word; but I have deeper ends in view for a glance so superficial : we 
may learn a lesson in charity, we may gain some schooling of the heart, 
even from those "ladies-legatees." 

Do you remember them, the supposititious nieces, aiders and abetters 
T 25 



290 HEART. 

in our stock-jobber's forged will? Two flashy, showy women, 7Wl of 
easy virtue, but of none at all — special intimates of John Dillaway, and 
the o-enus of his like, and habitual frequenters of divers choice and 
pleasant places of resort. 

The reason of their introduction here is two-fold : first, they have to 
play a part in our tale — a part of righteous retribution; and, secondly, 
they have to instruct us incidentally in this lesson of true morals and 
human charity — dread, denounce, and hate the sin, but feel a just com- 
passion for the sinner. Let us take the latter object first, and bear with 
the brief epitome of facts which have blighted those unfortunates to what 
they are. 

Look at these two women, impudent brawlers, foul v/ith vice: can 
there be any excuses made for them, considered as distinct from their 
condition? God knoweth: listen to their histories; and fear not that 
thy virtuous glance will be harmed or misdirected, or a minute of thy 
precious time ill-spent. 

Anna Bates and Julia Manners (their latest noms de guerre will serve 
all nominative purposes as well as any other) had arrived at the same 
lowest level of female degradation by very different downward roads. 
Anna's father had been a country curate, unfortunate through life, 
because utterly imprudent, and neither too wise a man nor too good a 
one, or depend upon it his orphan could not have come to this: "Never 
saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." But 
the father died carelessly as he had lived — in debt, with all his little 
affairs at sixes and sevens; and his widow with her budding daughter, 
saving almost nothing from the wreck, set up for milliners at Hull. 
Then did the mother pique herself upon playing her cards cleverly; 
for gallant Captain Croker was quite smitten with the girl. Poor child 
— she loved, listened, and was lost ; a more systematic traitor of affec- 
tion never breathed than that fine man ; so she left by night her soft 
intriguing broken-spirited mother, followed her Lothario from barrack 
to barrack, and at last — he flung her away! Who can wonder at llio 
reckless and dissolute result? Whom had she to care for her — whom 
had she to love? She must live thus, or starve. Without credit, char- 
acter, or hope, or help, the friendless unprotected wretch was thrown 
upon the town. When the last accounts are opened, oblivious General 
Croker will find an ell-long score of crimes laid to his charge, whereof 
he little reckons in his sear and yellow leaf. The trusting victim of 
seduction has a legion of excuses for the wretched one she is. 



FRAUD CUTS HIS FINGERS. 291 

Again ; for another case whereon the better-favoured heart may 
ruminate in char.ity. Miss Julia Manners had a totally different expe- 
rience ; but man can little judge how mainly the iron hand of circum- 
stance confined that life-long sinner to the ways and works of guilt. In 
the nervous language of the Bible — (hear it, men and women, without 
shrinking from the words) — that poor girl was "the seed of the adulterer 
and the whore :" born in a brothel, amongst outcasts from a better mass 
of life — brought up from the very cradle amid sounds and scenes of uttor 
vice (whereof we dare not think or speak one moment of the many years 
she dwelt continuously among them) — educated solely as a profligate, and 
ignorant alike of sin, righteousness, and a judgment to come — had she 
then a chance of good, or one hopeful thought of being better than she 
was? The water of holy baptism never bedewed that brow; the voice 
of motherly counsel never touched those ears ; her eyes were unskilled 
to read the records of wisdom ; her feet untutored to follow after holiness ; 
her heart unconscious of those evils which she never knew condemned ; 
her soul — she never heard or thought of one ! Oh, ye well-born, well- 
bred, ye kindly, carefully, prayerfully instructed daughters of innocence 
and purity, pause, pause, ere your charity condemns : hate the sin, but 
love the sinner : think it out further, for yourselves, in all those details 
which I have not time to touch, skill to describe, nor courage to encounter ; 
think out as kindly as ye may this episode of just indulgence; there is 
wisdom in this lesson of benevolence, and after-sweetness too, though 
the earliest taste of it be bitter; think it out; be humbler of your virtue, 
scarcely competent to err; be more grateful to that Providence which 
hath filled your lot with good ; and be gentler-hearted, more generous- 
handed unto those whose daily life is — all temptation. 

Now, these two ladies (who extenuates their guilt, caviller? who 
breathes one iota of excuse for their wicked manner of life ? who does 
not utterly denounce the foul and flagrant sin, whilst he leaves to a 
secret-searching God the judgment of the sinner?) — these two ladies, I 
say, had of late become very sore plagues to Mr. John Dillaway. They 
had flared out their hush-money like duchesses, till the whole town rang 
about their equipage and style ; and now, that all was spent, they pest- 
ered our stock-jobber for more. They came at an unlucky season, a 
season of "ill luck!" such a miraculous run of it, as nothing could 
explain to any rational mind but loaded dice, packed cards, contrivance 
and conspiracy. Nevertheless, our worthy John went on stakmg, and 
betting, and playing, resolute to break the bank, until it was no wonder 



292 HEART. 

at all to any but his own shrewd genius, that he found himself one feverish 
morning well nigh penniless. At such a moment then, called our ladies- 
legatees, clamorous for hush-money. 

As a matter most imperatively of course, not a farthing more should 
he forthcoming, and many oaths avouched that stern determination. 
They ought to be ashamed of themselves, after such an enormous bribe 
to each — as if shame of any kind had part or lot in those feminine 
iiccomplices : it was a sanguine thought of Mr. John Dillaway. But the 
ladies were not ashamed, nor silenced, nor any thing like satisfied. So, 
having thoroughly fatigued themselves with out-swearing and out-threat- 
ening our sneerful stock-jobber, they resolved upon exposing him, come 
V. hat might. For their own guilty part in that transaction of Mrs. Jane 
Mackenzie's pseudo-will, good sooth, the wretched Avomen had no char- 
acters to lose, nor scarcely aught else on which one could set a value. 
Danger and the trial would be an excitement to their pallid spirits, pos- 
sible transportation even seemed a ray of hope, since any thing was 
better than the town ; and in their sinful recklessness, liberty or life 
itself was little higher looked on than a dice's stake. Moreover, as to 
all manner of personal pains and penalties, there was every chance of 
getting oft" scot-free, provided they lost no time, went not one before the 
other, but doubly turned queen's evidence at once against their worthy 
coadjutor and employer. In the hope, then, of ruining him, if not of get- 
ting scathelessly off" themselves, these ladies-legatees mustered once more 
from the mazes of St. Giles's the pack of competent Irish witnesses, 
collected whatever, documentary or other evidence looked likeliest to 
help their ends, and then one early day presented themselves before 
the lord-mayor, eager to destroy at a blow that pleasant Mr. Dillaway. 

The proceedings were long, cautious, tedious, and secret: emissaries 
to Belfast, Doctors' Commons, and the bank : the stamp office was stirred 
to its foundations ; and Canterbury staggered at the fraud. Thus within 
a week the proper officials were in a condition to prosecute, and the issue 
of immense .examinations tended to that point of satisfaction, the haling 
Mr. Dillaway to prison on the charge of having forged a will. 



HEART'S CORE. 293 

CHAPTER XII. 

HEAJIT'S CORE. 

They were come into great want, poor Henry and Maria: they had 
not wherewithal for daily sustenance. The few remaining trinkets, 
books, clothes, and other available moveables had been gradually 
pledged away, and to their full amount — at least, the pawnbroker said 
so. That unlucky publication of the law book, so speedily condemned 
and heartlessly ridiculed, had wrecked all Henry's possible prospects in 
the courts ; and as for help from friends — the casual friends of common 
life — he was too proud to beg for that — too sensitive, too self-respectful. 
Relations he had none, or next to none — that distant cousin of his 
mother's, the Mac-something, whom he had never even seen, but who, 
nevertheless, had acted as his gixirdian. 

Much as he suspected Dillaway in the matter of that bitter breach of 
trust, he had neither ready money to proceed against him, (nor, when 
he came to think it over) any legal grounds at all to go upon ; for, as 
we have said before, even granting there should be evidence adduced 
of the transfer of stock from the name of Clements to that of Dillaway* 
still it was a notorious fact that the "Independent bank" had failed, 
whereto the stock-broker could swear he had intrusted it. In short, 
shrewd Jack had managed all that affair to admii'ation ; and poor Cle- 
ments was ruined without hope, and defrauded without remedy. 

Then, again, we already know how that Lady Dillaway was dead, so help 
from her was simply impossible ; and the miserable father Sir Thomas was 
kept too closely up to the mark of resolute anger by slanderous John, to 
give them any aid, if they applied to him; but, in truth, as to personal 
application, Henry would not for pride, and Maria now could not, for her 
near-at-hand motherly condition. Her frequent letters, as we may be 
sure, were intercepted ; and, even if Sir Thomas now and then yearned 
after his lost child, it had become a matter of physical impossibility to 
find out where she lived. Thus were they hopelessly sinking, day by 
day, into all the bitter waves of want. Not but that Henry strived, as 
we have seen, and shall yet see : still his endeavours had been very 
nearly fruitless — and, perchance, till all available moveables had been 
pawned outright, very feeble too. Now, however, that Maria, in her 

26* 



294 HEART 

sorrow and her need, must soor become a mother, the state of things 
i/rew terrible indeed ; their horizon was all over black with clouds. 

No: not all over. There is light under the darkness, a growing light 
that shall dispel the darkness; a precious light upon their souls, the 
early dawn of Heaven's eternal day; God's final end in all their 
troubles, the reaping-time of joy for their sowing-time of tears. 

Without cant, affectation, or hypocrisy, there is but one panacea for the 
bruised or broken heart, available alike in all times, all places, and all 
circumstances: and he who knows not what that is, has more to learn 
than I can teach him. That pure substantial comfort is born of 
Heaven's hope, and faith in Heaven's wisdom; it is a solid confidence 
in God's great love, but faintly shadowed out by all the charities of 
earth. Human affections in their manifold varieties are little other than 
an echo of that Voice, "Come unto me; Comfort ye, comfort ye; I will 
be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and my daughters ; thy 
Maker is thy Husband ; he hath loved thee with an everlasting love ; 
when thou goest through the fire, I will be with thee, through the waters, 
they shall not overflow thee ; eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
hath it entered into tlie mind of man to conceive the blessings which 
His love hath laid in store for thee." 

Heart's-ease in hcart's-affliction — this they found in God ; turning to 
Him with all their hearts, and pouring out their heai'ts before Him, they 
trusted in Him heartily for both worlds' good. Therefore did He give 
them their heart's desire, satisfying all their mind : wherefore did they 
love each other now with a newly. added plenitude of love, mutually in 
reference to Him who loved them, and gave Himself for them: there- 
fore did they feel in their distresses more gladness at their hearts, than in 
the days of luxury and affluence, the increase of their oil and their wine. 

For this is the great end of all calamities. God doth not willingly 
afflict: trouble never cometh without an urgent cause; and though man 
in his perverseness often misses all the prize of purity, whilst he pays all 
the penalty of pain ; still tlie motive that sent sorrow was the same — O, 
that there were a better heart in them ! 

In many modes the heart of man is tried, as gold must be refined, by 
many methods; and happiest is the heart, that, being tried by many, 
comes purest out of all. If prosperity melts it as a flux, well ; but 
better too than well, if the acid of affliction afterwards eats avvav all 
unseen impurities; whereas, to those with whom the world is in their 
hearts, affluence only hardens, and penury embitters, and thus, though 



HEART'S CORE. 295 

burnt in many fires, their hearts are dross in all. Like those sullen 
children in the market-place, they feel no sympathies with heaven or 
with earth : unthankful in prosperity, unsoftened by adversity, well may 
it be said of them, Hearts of stone, hearts of stone ! 

Not of such were Henry and Maria: naturally warm in affections 
and generous in sympathies, it needed but the pilot's hand to steer their 
hearts aright: the energies of life were there, both fresh and full, lacking 
but direction heavenwards ; and chastisement wisely interposed to wean 
those yearning spirits from the brief and feverish pursuits of unsatis- 
fying life, to the rest and the rewards of an eternity. Then were they 
wedded indeed, heart answering to heart ; then were they strong against 
all the ills of life, those hearts that were established by grace ; then 
spake they often one to another out of the abundance of their hearts ; 
and in spite of all their sorrows, they were happy, for their hearts were 
right with God. 

Let the grand idea suffice, unincumbered by the multitude of details. 
Whatsoever things are true, honest and just; whatsoever things are 
pure, lovely, or of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be 
any praise — believe of those twin hearts that God had given them all. 
Patience, hope, humility ; faith, tenderness, and charity ; prayer, trust, 
benevolence, and joy : this was the lot of the afflicted ! It was good for 
them that they had been in trouble ; for they had gained from it a wealth 
that is above the preciousness of rubies, deservedly dearer to their hearts 
than the thousands of gold and silver. 

What a contrast then was shown between God's kindness and man's 
coldness ! No one of their fellows seemed to give them any heed : but 
He cared for them, and on Him they cast their cares. Former friends 
appeared to stand aloof, self-dependent and unsympathizing ; but God 
was ever near, kindly bringing help in every extremity, which always 
seemed at hand, yet ever kept away : smoothing the pillow of sickness, 
comforting the troubled spirit, and treading down calamity and calumny 
and care ; as a conqueror conquering for them. So, they learned the 
priceless wisdom which adversity would teach to all on whom she 
frowneth ; when earthly hopes are wrecked, to anchor fast on God ; 
and if affluence should ever come again, to aid the poor afflicted with 
heartiness, beneficence, and home-taught sympathy. 



296 HEART. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

HOPE'S BmTH TO INNOCENCE, AND HOPE'S DEATH TO MAUD. 

John Dillaway's sudden loss of property, his character exploded as 
a monied man, and the strong probability of his turning out a felon, had 
a great effect on the spirits of Sir Thomas. He had called upon his 
promising son in prison, had found him very sulky, disinclined for social 
intercourse, and any thing but filial ; all he condescended to growl, with 
a characteristic d or two interlarding his eloquence, was this taunt- 
ing speech : 

" Well, governor, I may thank you and your counsels for this. Here 's 
a precious end to all my clever tricks of trade ! I wish you joy of your 
son, and of your daughter too, old man. Who wrote that letter? What, 
not found out yet? and does she still starve for it? Who gained money 
as you bade him — never mind how? And is now going to do honour to 
the family all round the world, ey? — Ha, ha, ha!" 

The poor unhappy father tottered away as quickly as he could, while 
yet the brutal laughter of that unnatural son rang upon his ears. He 
was quite miserable, let him turn which way he would. On 'Change 
the name had been disgraced — posted up for scorn on the board of 
degradation : at home, there was no pliant son and heir, to testify 
ao-ainst Maria, and to close the many portals of a wretched father's heart. 
He grew very wretched — very mopy ; determined upon cutting adrift 
shrewd Jack himself, as a stigma on the name which had once held the 
mace of mayoralty ; made his will petulantly, for good and all, in favour 
of Stationer's hall, and felt very like a man who had lived in vain. 
"Cut it down; why cumbereth it the earth?" 

Meanwhile, in those two opposite quarters of the world of London, 
Newgate and Islington, Sir Thomas's two discarded children were 
bearing in a different way their different privations. Poor Maria's hour 
of peril had arrived ; and amidst all those pains, dangers, and necessities, 
a soft and smiling babe was born into the world ; gladness filled their 
hearts, and praise was on their tongues, when the happy father and 
mother kissed that first-born son. It was a splendid boy, they said, and 
should redeem his father's fortunes : there was hope in the future, let 
the past be what it may ; and this new bond of union to that happy 



HOPE'S BIRTH TO INNOCENCE. 297 

wedded pair made the present — one unclouded scene of gratitude and 
love. Who shall sing of the humble ale-caudle, and those cheerful 
givings to surrounding poor, scarcely poorer than themselves? Who 
shall record how kind was Henry, how useful was the nurse, how liberal 
the doctor, how sympathizing all? Who shall tell how tenderly did 
Providence step in with another author's night of that same tragedy, and 
how other avenues to literary gain stood wide open to industry and 
genius? It was happiness all, happiness, and triumph: they were 
weathering the storm famously, and had safely passed the breakers of 
False-witness 

Amidst the other part of London sate a sullen fellow, quite alone, in 
Newgate, looking for his trial on the morrow, and prophesying accurately 
enough how si^me two days hence, he, John Dillaway, of Broker's alley, 
son and heir of the richest stationer in Europe, was to appear in the char- 
acter of a convicted felon, and be probably condemned to transportation 
for life. A pleasant retrospect was his, a pleasanter aspect, and a plcas- 
anter prospect; all was pleasure assuredly. 

And the morrow duly came ; with those implacable approvers, those 
accurate Irish witnesses, those tell-tale documents, that prosecuting crown 
and bank, that dogged jury, and that sentencing recorder: so then, by a 
little after noon, to the scandal of Finsbury square, John Dillaway dis- 
covered that the "wise man's trick or two in the money market" was 
about to be rewarded with twenty-one years of transportation. 

Of this interesting fact Henry Clements became acquainted by an 
occasional peep into the public prints ; and he perceived to his astonish- 
ment, that the defrauded Mrs. Jane Mackenzie, of Ballyriggan, nenr 
Belfast, could surely be none other than his mother's Ulster cousin, tho 
nominal guardian of his boyhood! To be sure, it mattered little enough 
to him, for the old lady had never been much better than a stranger to 
him, and at present appeared only in that useless character to an expect- 
ant, a person despoiled of her money; nevertheless, of that identical 
money, certain sanguine friends had heretofore given him expectations 
in the event of her death, seeing that she had nobody to leave it to, 
except himself and the public charities of the United Kingdom: clearly, 
this cousin must have been the defrauded bank annuitant, and he could 
not help feeling more desolate than ever; for John Dillaway's evil 
influences had robbed him now of name, fame, fortune, and what hope 
regards as much as any — expectations. Yet — must not the bank of 
England bear the brunt of all this forgery, and account for its stock to 



298 HEART. 

tliat innocent depositor? Old Mrs. Jane was sinking into dotago, 
pi'obably had plenty of other money, and scarcely seemed to stir about 
the business ; therefore, legitimately interested as Henry indubitably was, 
he took upon him to write to his- antiquated relative, and in so doing 
managed to please her mightily : renewed whatever interest she ever 
might have felt in him, enabled her to enforce her just claim, and really 
stood a likelier chance than ever of coming in for competency some 
dciy. However, for the present, all was penury still. Clements had 
been too delicate for even a hint at his deplorable condition : and his 
distant relative's good feeling, so providentially renewed, served indeed 
to gild the future, but did not avail to gingerbread the present. So they 
struggled on as well as they could : both very thankful for the chance 
which had caused a coalition between sensitiveness and interest ; and 
Maria at least more anxious than ever for a reconciliation with her 
father, now that all his ardent hopes had been exploded in son John. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PE0BAJ3LE RECONCILIATION. 

It was no use — none at all. Nature was too strong for him ; and 
a higher force than even potent Nature. In vain Sir Thomas pish'd, 
and tush'd' and bah'd; in vain he buried himself chin-deep amongst the 
century of ledgers that testified of gainful years gone by, and were now 
mustily rotting away in the stagnant air of St. Benet's Sherehog : interest 
had lost its interest for him, profits profited not, speculation's self had 
dull, lack-lustre eyes, and all the hard realities of utilitarian life were 
become weary, flat, and stale. Sir Thomas was a miserable man — a 
bereaved old man — who nevertheless clung to what was left, and 
struggled not to grieve for what was lost : there was a terrible strife 
going on secretly within him, dragging him this way and that: a little 
lightning flash of good had been darted by Omnipotence right througli 
the stone-built caverns of his heart, and was smouldering a concentred 
flame within its innermost hollow ; a small soft-skinned seed had been 
dropped by the Father of Spirits into that iron-bound soil, and it was 
swelling day by day under the case-hardened surface, gradually with 



PROBABLE RECONCILIATION. 299 

gentle violence, despite of all the locks and gates, and bolts and bars, a 
silent enemy had somehow crept within the fortress of his feelings, 
ready ai any unguarded moment to fling tlie portals open. The rock 
had a sealed fountain leaping within it, as an infant in the womb. The 
poor old man, the worldly cold old man, was giving way. 

Happy misery ! for his breaking heart revealed a glorious jewel at 
the core. Oh, sorrow beyond price! for natural affections, bursting up 
amid these unsunned snows, were a hot-spring to that Iceland soul. Oh, 
bitter, bitter penitence most blest! which broke down the money-proud 
man, which bruised and kneaded him, humbled, smote, and softened him, 
and made him come again a little child — a loving, yearning, little child 
— a child with pity in its eyes, with prayer upon its tongue, with gener- 
ous affection in its heart. "Oh, Maria! precious, cast-off child, where 
art thou, where art thou, where art thou — starving? And canst thou, 
blessed God, forgive? And will not thy great mercy bring her to me 
yet again? Oh, what a treasury of love have I mis-spent; what riches 
of the Heart, what only truest wealth, have I, poor prodigal, been squan- 
dering! Unhappy son — unhappy father of the perjured, heartless, mis- 
erable John ! Wo is me ! Where art thou, dear child, my pure and 
best Maria?" 

We may well guess, far too well, how it was that dear Maria came 
not near him. She had been, prior to confinement, very, very ill : nigh 
to death : the pangs of travail threatened to have seized upon her all too 
soon, when wasted with sorrow, and weakened by want. She lay, long 
weeks, battling for life, in her little back parlour, at Islington, tended 
night and day by her kind, good husband. 

But did she not often (you will say) urge him, earnestly as the dying 
ask, to seek out her father or brother (she had not been told of his con- 
viction), and to let them know this need ? Why, then, did he so often 
put her off with faint excuses, and calm her with coming hopes, and do 
any thing, say any thing, suffer any thing, rather than execute the fervent 
wish of the affectionate Maria? It is easily understood. With, and 
notwithstanding, all the high sentiments, strong sense, and warm feelings 
of Henry Clements, he was too proud to seek any succour of the Dilla- 
ways. Sooner than give that hard old man, or, beforetime, that keen 
malicious young one, any occasion to triumph over his necessitous con- 
dition, he himself would starve: ay, and trust to Heaven his darling 
wife and child ; but not trust these to them. Never, never — if the 
heart-divorcing work-house were their doom — should that father or that 



300 HEART. 

brother hear from him a word of supplication, or one murmur of com- 
plaint. Nay; he took pains to hinder their knowledge of this trouble: 
all the world, rather than those two men. Let penury, disease, the very 
parish-beadle triumph over him, but not those two. It was a natural feel- 
ing for a sensitive mind like his — but in many respects a wrong one. It 
was to put away, deliberately, the helping hand of Providence, because 
it bade him kiss the rod. It was a direct preference of honour to 
humility. It was an unconsciously unkind consideration of himself 
before those whom he nevertheless believed and called more dear to hiin 
than life — but not than honour. Therefore it was that the hand-bills he 
had so often seen pasted upon walls were disregarded, that the numerous 
newspaper advertisements remained unanswered, and that all the efforts 
of an almost frantic father to find his long-lost daughter were in vairl. 

Meanwhile, to be just upon poor Clements, who really fancied he was 
doing right in this, he left no stone unturned to obtain a provision for his 
beloved wife and child. Frequently, by letters (as little urgent as 
affection and necessity would suffer him), he had pressed upon some 
powerful friends for that vague phantom of a gentlemanly livelihood — 
"something under government;" a hope improbable of accomplishment, 
indefinite as to view, but still a hope : especially, since very civil 
answers came to his request, couched in terms of official guardedness. 
He had called anxiously upon "old friends," in pretty much of his usual 
elegant dress (for he was wise enough, or proud enough, never to let his 
poverty be seen in his attire), and they made many polite inquiries after 
" Mrs. Clements," and "Where are you living?" and "How is it you 
never come our way?" and "Clements has cut us all dead," and so 
forth. It was really entirely his own fault, but he never could contrive 
to tell the truth : and when one day, in a careless tone of voice, he 
threw out something about "Do you happen to have ten pounds about 
you?" to a dashing young blood of his acquaintance — the dashing young 
blood affected to treat it as a joke — "You married men, lucky dogs, with 
your regular establishments, are too hard upon us poor bachelors, who 
have nothing but clubs to go to. I give you my honour, Clements, ten 
pounds would dine me for a fortnight: — spare me this time, there's a 
fine fellow : take the trouble to write a cheque on your bankers — here 's 
paper — and my tiger shall get it cashed for you while you wait: we 
poor bachelors are never flush." But Clements had already owned it 
was a mere "obiter dictum" — nothing but a joke of prudent marriage 
against extravagant bachelorship. 



PROBABLE RECONCILIATION. 30I 

Ah, v,-hat a bitter joke was tliat! On the verge of that yes or no, to 
be uttered by his frank young friend, trembled reluctant honour; home- 
afFections Were imploring in that careless tone of voice ; hunger put that 
ofF-hand question. It was vain ; a cruel killing effort for his pride : so 
Henry Clements never asked again; withdrew himself from friends; 
grew hopeless, all but reckless; and his only means of living were 
picked up scantily from the by-ways of literature. An occasional 
guinea from a magazine, a copy of that luckily anonymous tragedy 
now and then sold by him from house to house (he always disguised 
himself at such times), a little indexing to be done for publishers, and 
a little correcting of the press for printers — ^these formed the trifling and 
uncertain pittance upon which the pale family existed. Poor Henry 
Clements, proud Henry Clements, you had, indeed, a dose of physic for 
your pride : bitter draughts, bitter draughts, day after day ; but, for all 
that weak and wasted wife, dearly, devotedly beloved ; for all the pining 
infant, Avith its angel face and beautiful smiles : for all the strong plead- 
ings of affection, yea, and gnawing hunger too, the strong man's pride 
was stronger. And had not God's good providence proved mercifully 
strongest of them all, that family of love would have starved outright 
for pride. 

But Heaven's favour willed it otherwise. By something little short 
of miracle, where food was scant and medicine scarce, the poor emaci- 
ated mother gradually gained strength — that long, low fever left her, 
health came again upon her cheek, her travail passed over prosperously, 
the baby too thrived, (oh, more than health to mothers!) and Maria Cle- 
ments found herself one morning strong enough to execute a purpose 
she had long most anxiously designed. " Henry was wrong to think so 
harshly of her father. She knew he would not spurn her away : he 
must be kind, for she loved him dearly still. Wicked as it doubtless 
was of her [dear innocent girl] to have done any thing contrary to his 
wishes, she was sure he would relieve her in her utmost need. He 
could not, could not be so hard as poor dear Henry made him." So, 
taking advantage of her husband's absence during one of his literary 
pilgrimages, she took her long-forgotten bonnet and shawl, and, with the 
baby in her arms, flew on the wings of love, duty, penitence, and affec- 
tion to her dear old home in Finsbury square. 

26 . 



302 HEART. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE FATHER PINDS HIS HEART FOR EVER. 

He had been at death's door, sinking out of life, because he had 
nothing now to live for. Fie still was very weak in bed, faint, and 
worn, and white, propped up with pillows — that poor, bereaved old man. 
Ever since Lady Dillaway's most quiet death he had felt alone in the 
world. True, while she lived she had seemed to him a mere tranquil 
trouble, a useless complacent piece of furniture, often in his way ; but 
now that she was dead, what a void was left where she had been — mere 
empty space, cold and death-like. She had left him quite alone. 

Then again — of John, poor John, he would think, and think continu- 
ally — not about the little vulgar pock-marked man of 'change, the broker, 
the rogue, the coward — but of a happy curly child, with sparkling eyes 
— a mei-ry-hearted, ruddy little fellow, romping with his sister — ay, in 
this very room ; here is the identical China vase he broke, all rivetod 
up; there is the corner where he would persist to nestle his dormice. 
Ah, dear child! precious child! where is he now? — Where and what 
indeed! Alas, poor father! had you known what I do, and shall soon 
inform the world, of that bad man's awful end, one more, one fiercest pang 
would have tormented you : but Heaven spared that pang. Nevertheless, 
the bitter contrast of the child and of the man had made him very 
wretched — and to the widower's solitude added the father's sadness. 

And worst of all — Maria's utter loss — that dear, warm-hearted, inno 
cent, ill-used, and yet beloved daughter. Why did he spurn her away ? 
and keep her away so long? — oh, hard heart, hard heart! Was she not 
innocent, after all? and John, bad John, too probably the forger of that 
letter, as the forger of this will? And now that he should give his life 
to see her, and kiss her, and — no, no, not forgive her, but pray to he 
forgiven bv her — "Where is she? why doesn't she come to hold up mv 
poor weak head — to see how fervently my dead old heart has at last 
learnt to love — to help a bad, and hard, a pardoned and penitent old 
man to die in perfect peace — to pray with me, for me, to God, our God, 
my daughter! Where is she — how can I find her out — why will she 
not come to me all this sorrowful year? Oh come, come, dear child — 
our Father send thee to me — come and bless me ere I die — come, niy 
Maria!" 



THE FATHER FINDS HIS HEART. 393 

Magical, or contrived, as it may seem to us, the poor old man was 
actually bemoaning himself thus, when our dear heroine of the Heart 
faintly knocked at her old home door. It opened ; a faded-looking 
woman, with a baby in her arms, rushed past the astonished butler : 
and, just as her father was praying out aloud for Heaven to speed her 
to him, that daughter's step was at the bed-room door. 

Before she turned the handle (some house-maid had recognised her 
on the stairs, and told her, with an impudent air, that "Sir Thomas was 
ill a-bed "), she stopped one calming instant to gain strength of God for 
that dreaded interview, and to check herself from bursting in upon the 
chamber of sickness, so as to disquiet that dear weak patient. So, she 
prayed, gently turned the handle, and heard those thrilling words — 
"Come, my Maria!" 

It was enough; their hearts burst out together like twin fountains, 
rolling their joyful sorrows together towards the sea of endless love, as 
a swollen river that has broken through some envious and constraining 
dam ! It was enough ; they wept together, rejoiced together, kissed and 
clasped each other in the fervour of full love : the babe lay smiling and 
playing on the bed : Maria, in a torrent of happiest tears, fondled that 
poor old man, who was crying and laughing by turns, as little children 
do — was praising God out loud like a saint, and calling down blessings 
on his daughter's head in all the transports of a new-found Heart. 
What a world of things they had to tell of — how much to explain, 
excuse, forgive, and be forgiven, especially about that wicked letter — 
how fervently to make up now for love that long lay dormant — how 
heartily to bless each other, and to bless again ! Who can record it all ? 
Who can even sketch aright the heavenly hues that shone about that 
scene of the affections? Alas, my pen is powei'less — yea, no mortal 
hand can trace those heavenly hues. Angels that are round the peni- 
tent's, the good man's bed — ye alone who witness it, can utter what yo 
see : ye alone, rejoicingly with those rejoicing, gladly speed aloft frequent 
ambassadors to Him, the Lord of Love, with some new beauteous trait, 
some rare ecstatic thought, some pure delighted look, some more burning 
prayer, some gem of Heaven's jewellery more brilliant than the rest, 
which raises happy envy of your bright compeers. I see your shining 
bands crowding enamoured round that scene of human tenderness; 
while now and then some peri-like seraph of your thronging spiritual 
forms will gladly wing away to find favour of his God for a tear, or a 
[jrnyer, or a holy thought dropped by his ministering hands hito the 
treasury of Heaven. 



304 HEART. 

But the cup of joy is large and deep: it is an ocean in capacity: and 
mantling though it seemeth to the brim, God's bounty poureth on. 

Another step is on the stairs! You have guessed it, Henry Clements. 
Returning home wearily, after a disheartening expedition, and finding 
his wife, to his great surprise, gone out, sick and weak, as still he thought 
her, he had calculated justly on the direction whereunto her heart had 
carried her ; he had followed her speedily, and, with many self-com- 
punctions, he had determined to be proud no more, and to help, with all 
his heart, in that holy reconciliation. See! at the bed-side, folding 
Maria with one arm, and with his other hand tightly clasped in both 
of that kind and changed old man's, stands Henry Clements. 

Ay, changed indeed ! Who could have discovered in that joy-illu- 
mined brow, in those blessing-dropping lips, in those eyes full of peni- 
tence, and pity, and peace, and praise, and prayer, the harsh old usurer 
— the crafty money-cankered knave of dim St. Benet's Sherehog — the 
cold husband — the cruel father — the man without a heart? Ay, 
changed — changed for ever now, an ever of increasing happiness and 
love. Who or what had caused this deep and mighty change? Natural 
affection was the sword, and God's the arm that wielded it. None but 
he could smite so deeply; and when he smote, pour balm into the 
wound : none but He could kill death, that dead dried heart, and quicken 
life within its mummied caverns : none but the Voice, which said " L'-t 
there be light," could work this common miracle of "Let there be love." 

He grew feebler — feebler, that dying kind old man : it had been too 
much for him, doubtlessly ; he had long been ill, and should long ago 
have died ; but that he had lived for this ; and now the end seemed near. 
They never left his bed-side then for days and nights, that new-found 
son and daughter : physicians came, and recommended that the knight 
be quite alone, quite undisturbed : but Sir Thomas would not, could not 
— it were cruelty to force it; so he lay feebly on his back, holding on 
either side the hands of Henry and Maria. 

It was not so very long : they had come almost in the nick of time : 
a few days and hours at the most, and all will then be over. So did 
they watch and pray. 

And the old man faintly whispered : 

"Henry — son Henry: poor John, forgive him, as you and our God 
have now forgiven me ; poor John — when he comes back again from 
those long years of slavery, give him a home, son — give him a home, 
and enough to keep him honest; tell him I love him, and forgive him; 
and remind him that I died, praying Heaven for my poor boy's soul. 



THE FATHER FINDS HIS HEART. 



305 



"Henry and Maria — I had, since my great distresses, well nigh for- 
gotten this world's wealth ; but now, thank God, I have thought of it all 
for your sakes : in my worst estate of mind I made a wicked will. It 
is ill that drawer — quick, give it me. 

" Thanks — thanks — there is time to tear it ; and these good friends, 
Dr. Jones and Mr. Blair, take witness — ■! destroy this wicked will ; and 
my only child, Maria, has my wealth in course of law. Wealth, yes — 
if well used, let us call it wealth ; for riches may indeed be made a mine 
of good, and joy, and righteousness. I am unworthy to use any of it well, 
unworthy of the work, unworthy of the reward : use it well, my holier 
children, wisely, liberally, kindly: God give you to do great good with 
it; God give you to feel great happiness in all your doing good. My 
hands that saved and scraped it all, also often-times by evil hardness, 
now penitently washed in the Fountain of Salvation, heartily renounce 
that evil. Be ye my stewards: give liberally to many needy. Oh me, 
my sin ! children, to my misery you know what need is : I can say no 
more ; poor sinful man, how dare I preach to others? Children, dearest 
ones, I am a father still ; and I would bless you — bless you ! 

"I grow weak, but my heart seems within me to grow stronger — I 
go — I go, to the Home of Heart, where He that sits upon the throne is 
Love, and where all the pulses of all the beings there thrill in unison 
with him, the Great Heart of Heaven! I, even I, am one of the 
redeemed — my heart is fixed, I will sing and give praise ; I, even I, the 
hardest and the worst, forgiven, accepted ! Who are ye, bright messen- 
gers about my bed, heralds of glory? I go — I go — one — one more, 
Maria — one last kiss ; we meet — again — in Heaven !" 

Had he fainted? yes — his countenance looked lustrous, yet diminish- 
ing in glory, even as a setting sun ; the living smile faded gradually 
away, and a tranquil cold calm crept over his cheeks : the angelic light 
which made his eyes so beautiful to look at, was going out — going out : 
all was peace — peace — deep peace. 

O death, where is thy victory? grave, where is thy sting? 
U 26* 



306 HEART. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

A WORD ABOUT ORIGINALITY AND MOURNING. 

When a purely inventive genius concocts a fabulous tale, it is clearly 
competent to him so to order matters, that characters shall not die off till 
his book is shortly coming to an end : and had your obedient servant 
now been engaged in the architecture of a duly conventional story, 
arranged in pattern style, with climax in the middle and a brace of ups 
and downs to play supporters, doubtless he might easy have kept alive 
both father and mother to witness the triumph of innocence, and have 
produced their deaths at the last as a kind of "sweet sorrow," or honied 
sting, wherewithal to point his moral. Such, however, was not my 
authorship's intention ; and, seeing that a wilful pen must have its way, 
I have chosen to construct my own veracious tale, respecting the inci- 
dents of life and death, much as such events not unfrequently occur, 
that is, at an inconvenient season : for though such accessories to the 
fact of dying, as triumphant conversion, or a tranquil going out, may 
appear to be a little out of the common way, still the circumstance of 
death itself often in real life seems to come as out of time, as your wis- 
dom thinks in the present book of Heart. People will die untowardly, 
and people will live provokingly, notwithstanding all that novelists have 
said and poets sung to the contrary : and if two characters out of our 
principal five have already left the mimic scene, it will now be my duty 
only to show, as nature and society do, how, of those three surviving 
chief dramatis personce, two of them — to wit, our hero and heroine of 
Heart — gathered many friends about their happy homestead, did a world 
of good, and, in fine, furnish our volume with a suitable counterpoise to 
the mass of selfish sin, which (at its height in the only remaining char- 
acter) it has been my fortune to record and to condemn as the opposite 
topic of heartlessness. 

If writers will be bound by classic rules, and walk on certain roads 
because other folks have gone that way before them, needs must that ill- 
starred originality perish from this world's surface, and find refuge (if 
it can) in the gentle moon or Sirius. Therefore, let us boldly trespass 
from the trodden paths, let us rather shake off the shackles of custom 
than hug them as an ornament approved : and, notwithstanding both 



ABOUT ORIGINALITY, ETC. 307 

parental deaths, seemingly ill-timed for the happiness of innocence, let 
•us acquiesce in the facts, as plain matters of history, not dubious 
thoughts of fiction ; and let us gather to the end any good we can, either 
#i-om the miserable solitude of a selfish Dillaway, or from the hearty 
social circle of our happy married pair. 

Need I, sons and daughters, need I record at any length how Maria 
mourned for her father? If you now hare parents worthy of your love, 
if you now have hearts to love them, I may safely leave that theme to 
your affections: "now" is for all things "the accepted time," now is 
the day for reconciliations : our life is a perpetual now. However unfil- 
ial you may have been, however stern or negligent they, if there is now 
the will to bless, and now the heart to love, all is well — well at the last, 
well now for evermore — thank Heaven for so glad a consummation. 
Oh, that my pen had power to make many fathers kind, many children 
trustful ! Oh, that by some burning word I could thaw the cold, shame 
sarcasms, and arouse the apathetic ! Oh that, invoking upon every 
hearth, whereto this book may come, the full free blaze of home affec- 
tions, my labour of love be any thing but vain, when God shall have 
blessed what I am writing ! 

Yes, children, dear Maria did mourn for her father, but she mourned 
as those who hope ; his life had been forgiven, and his death was as a 
saints's: as for her, rich rewarded daughter at the last, one word of 
warm acknowledgement, one look of true affection, one tear of deep con- 
trition, would have been superabundant to clear away all the many 
clouds, the many storms of her past home-life : and as for our Maker, 
with his pure and spotless justice, faith in the sacrifice had passed all 
sin to him, and love of the Redeemer had proved that faith the true 
one. How should a daughter mourn for such a soul ? With tears of 
joy; with sighs — of kindred hopefulness; with happiest resolve to live 
as he had died ; with instant prayer that her last end be like his. 

There is a plain tablet in St. Benet's church, just within the altar- 
rail, bearing — no inscription about Lord Mayoralty, Knighthood, or the 
Worshipful Company of Stationers — but full of facts more glorious 
than every honour under heaven ; for the words run thus : 

SORROWFUL, YET REJOICING, 

A daughter's love has placed this tablet 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

THOMAS DILLAWAY; 

A MAN WHO DIED IN THE FAITH OF CHRIST^, 
IN THE LOVE OF GOD, AND IN THE HOPE OF HEAVEN. 



308 HEART. 

Noble epitaph ! Let us so live, that the like of this may be truth on 
our tomb-stones. Seek it, rather than wealth, before honour, instead of 
pleasure ; for, indeed, those words involve within their vast significancy 
riches unsearchable, glory indestructible, and pleasure for evermore! 
Hide them, as a string of precious pearls, within the casket of your hearts. 

I had almost forgotten, though Maria never could, another neighbour- 
ing tablet to record the peaceful exit of her mother ; however, as this 
liad been erected by Sir Thomas in his life-time, and was plastered 
thick with civic glories and heathen virtues, possibly the transcript may 
bo spared : there was only one sentence that looked true about the 
epitaph, though I wished it had been so in every sense ; but, to common 
eyes, it had seemed quite suitable to the physical quietude of living 
Lady Dillaway, to say, "Her end was peace;" although, perhaps, the 
husband little thought how sore that mother's heart was for dear Maria's 
loss, how full of anxious doubts her mind about Maria's sin. Poor soul, 
however peaceful now that spirit has read the truth, in the hour of her 
departure it had been with her far otherwise : her dying bed was 
as a troubled sea, for she died of a broken heart. 

Yearly, on the anniversaries of their respective deaths, the growing 
clan of Clements make a solemn pilgrimage to their grand paternal 
shrine, attending service on those days (or the holiday nearest to them), 
at St. Benet's Shere-hog; and Maria's eyes are very moist on such 
occasions ; though hope sings gladly too within her wise and cheerful 
heart. She does not seem to have lost those friends; they are only 
gone before. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE HOUSE OF FEASTING. 

But in fact, with our happy married folks an anniversary of some 
sort is perpetually recurring: wedding-days, birth-days, and all manner 
of festival occasions, worthy (as the old Romans would have said) to be 
noted up with chalk, happened in that family of love weekly — almost 
daily. They cultivated well the grateful soil of Heart, by a thousand 
little dressings and diggings ; courting to it the warm sunshine of the 



THE HOUSE OF FEASTING. 3O9 

skies, the zephyrs of pleasant recollections, and the genial clews of sym- 
pathy. And very wise wei'e all those labours of delight ; for their sons 
and their daughters grew up as the polished corners in the temple ; 
moulded with delicate affections, their moral essence sharp, and clearly 
edged with sensitive feelings, as if they had sprung fresh from tlie 
hands of God, their sculptor, and the world had not rubbed off the mas- 
ter-touches of His chisel. For, in this dull woi'ld, we cheat ourselves 
and one another of innocent pleasures by the score, through very care- 
lessness and apathy : courted day after day by happy memories, we 
rudely brush them off with this indiscriminating besom, the stern mate- 
rial present : invited to help in rendering joyful many a patient heart, 
we neglect the little word that might have done it, and continually 
defraud creation of its share of kindliness from us. The child made 
merrier by your interest in his toy ; the old domestic flattered by your 
seeing him look so well ; the poor, better helped by your blessing than 
your penny (though give the penny too) ; the labourer, cheered upon his 
toil by a timely word of praise; the humble friend encouraged by your 
frankness ; equals made to love you by the expression of your love ; and 
superiors gratified by attention and respect, and looking out to benefit the 
kindly — how many pleasures here for any hand to gather; how many 
blessings here for any heart to give ! Instead of these, what have we 
rife about the world ? Frigid compliment — for warmth is vulgar ; reserve 
of tongue — for it is folly to be talkative; composure, never at fault — for 
feelings are dangerous things ; gravity — for that looks wise ; coldness — 
for other men are cold ; selfishness — for every one is struggling for his 
own. This is all false, all bad ; the slavery chain of custom riveted by 
the foolishness of fashion ; because there ever is a band of men and 
Avomen, who have nothing to recommend them but externals — their looks 
or their dresses, their rank or their wealth — and in order to exalt the 
honour of these, they agree to set a compact seal of silence on the 
heart and on the mind ; lest the flood of humbler men's affections, or of 
wiser men's intelligence, should pale their tinsel-praise ; and the warm 
and the wise too softly acquiesce in this injury done to heartiness shamed 
by the effrontery of cold calm fools, and the shallow dignity of an empty 
presence. Turn the tables on them, ye truer gentry, truer nobility, 
truer royalty of the heart and of the mind ; speak freely, love warmly, 
laugh cheerfully, explain frankly, exhort zealously, admire liberally, 
advise earnestly — be not ashamed to show you have a heart : and if 
some cold-blooded simpleton greet your social effort with a sneer, repay 



310 HEART. 

)iim — for you can well afford a richer gift than his whole treasury pos- 
sesses — repay him with a kind good-humoured smile : it would have 
shamed Jack Diliaway himself. If a man persists to be silent in a 
crowd for vanity's sake, instead of sociable, as good company expects, 
count him simply for a fool; you will not be far wrong; he remembers 
the copy-book at school, no doubt, with its large-text aphorism, "Silence 
is wisdom;" and thinking in an easy obedience to gain credit from man- 
kind by acting on that questionable sentence, the result is what you per- 
petually see — a self-contained, self-satisfied, selfish, and reserved young 
puppy. Hint to such an incommunicative comrade, that the fashion 
now is coming about, to talk and show your wisdom ; not to sit in shallow 
silence, hiding hard your folly; soon shall you loosen the flood-gates of 
his speech ; and society will even thank you for it ; for, bore as the chat- 
terer may oft-times be, still he does the frank companion's duty; and at 
any rate is vastly preferable to the dull, unwarmed, unsympathetic 
watcher at the festal board, who sits there to exhibit his painted waistcoat 
instead of the heart that should be in it, and patiently waits, with a 
snakish eye and a bitter tongue, to aid conversation with a sarcasm. 

Henry and Maria had many hearty friends to keep their many anniver- 
saries. They were well enough for wealth, as we may guess without 
much trouble ; for the knight had left three thousand a-year behind him, 
and Maria, as sole heiress, had no difficulty in establishing her claim to 
it; but it may be well to put mankind in memory how hospitably, how 
charitably, how wisely, and how heartily they stewarded it. I need not 
stop to tell of local charities assisted, good societies supported, and of 
philanthropic good done by means of their money, both at home and 
abroad : nor detail their many dinners, and other festal opportunities, 
rivets in the lengthening chain of ordinary friendship : but I do wish to 
make honourable mention of one happiest anniversary, which, while it 
commemorated fine young Master Harry's birth, rejoiced the many poor 
of Lower-Sack street, Islington. 

The birth-day itself was kept at home with all the honours, in their 
old house at Finsbury square ; Maria would not leave that house, for old 
acquaintance sake. Master Harry, a frank-faced, open-hearted, curly- 
headed boy of ten (at least when I dined there, for he has probably 
grown older since), was of course the happy hero of the feast, ably sup- 
ported by divers joyful brothers and sisters, who had all contributed to 
their elder brother's triumph on that day, by the contribution of their 
various presents — one a little scent bag, another a rude drawing, another 



THE HOUSE OF FEASTING. 31 1 

a book-marker, and so forth, all probably worthless in the view of sel- 
fish calculation, but inestimable according to the currency of Heart. 
Half-a-dozen choice old friends closed the list of company ; and a noisy 
rout of boys and girls were added in the early evening, full of negus, 
and sponge-cake, snap-dragon, and blindman's-buff, with merry music, 
and a golden-flood of dances and delight. 

We dined early; and, to be very confidential with you, I thought 
(until I found out reasons why), that the bill-of-fare upon the table was 
inordinately large, not to say vulgar ; for the board was overloaded with 
solid sweets and savouries : so, in my uncharitable mind, I set all that 
down to the uncivilized hospitality asserted of a citizen's feast, and (for 
aught I know) still rife in St. Mary Axe and Finsbury square. 

Never mind how the dinner passed off", nor how jovially the children 
kept it up till near eleven : for I learnt, in an incidental way, what was 
regularly done upon the morrow ; and I am sure it will gratify my 
readers to learn it too, aS a trait of considerate kindness which will 
gladden man and woman's heart. 

On the seventh of April in every year (Harry's birth-day was the 
sixth), Henry and Maria used to go on an humble pilgrimage to Lower 
Sack street, Islington. Not to shame the poor by fine clothes or their 
usual equipage, they sedulously donned on that occasion the same now 
faded suits they had worn in their adversity, and made their progress in 
a hackney-coach. They would have walked for humility's sake and 
sympathy, but that the coach in question was crammed full of eatables 
and drinkables, nicely packed up in well-considered parcels, consisting 
of the vast d6hris of yesterday's overwhelming feast, with a sackful of 
tea and sugar added. Their pockets also, as I took the liberty of 
inquiring at Sack street afterwards, must have been well stored, for 
their largess was munificent. Then would they go to that identical 
lodgings of years gone by, where they had so struggled with adversity, 
now in the happy contrast of wealth and peace and thankfulness to 
Heaven, and of joy at doing good. That parlour was right liberally 
hired for the day, and all the poor in Sack street were privileged to call, 
where Mrs. Clements held her levee. They came in an orderly stream, 
clean for the occasion, and full of gratitude and blessings ; and, to be 
just upon the poor, no impostor had ever been known to intrude upon the 
privilege of Sack street. As for dear Maria, she regularly broke down 
just as the proceedings commenced, and Henry's manlier hand had to 
give away the spoil ; whilst Maria sobbed beside him, as if her heart 



gi2 HEART. 

would break. Then did the good old nurse come in for a cold round of 
beef, with tea, sugar, and a sovereign ; and the bed-ridden neighbour 
up-stairs for jellied soup, and other condiments, with a similar royal 
climax; and the cobbler over the way carried off ham and chickens, 
with apple-puffs and a bottle of wine : and so some thirty or forty fami- 
lies were gladdened for the hour, and made wealthy for a week. Alto- 
gether they divided amongst them a coachful of comestibles, and a 
pocketful of coin. 

It would be impertinent in us to intrude so far on privacy, as to record 
how Henry and Maria passed much time in prayer and praise on that 
interesting anniversary ; it is unnecessary too, for in fact they did not 
stop for anniversaries to do that sort of thing. Be sure that good 
thoughts and good words are ever found preceding good and grateful 
deeds. It is quite enough to know that they did God service in doing 
good to man. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE END OF THE HEARTLESS. 

There is plenty of contrast in this poor book, if that be any virtue. 
Let us turn our eyes away from those scenes of love and cheerfulness, 
of benevolence and peace. Let us leave Maria in her nursery, hearing 
the little ones their lessons; and Henry cutting the leaves of a nice new 
book, fresh from the press, while his home-taught son and heir is play- 
ing at pot-hooks and hangers in a copy-book beside him. Let us recol- 
lect their purity of mind, their holiness of motive, and their happiness 
of life; these are the victims of false-witness. And how fares the 
wretch that would have starved them ? 

The fate of John Dillaway is at once so tragical, so interesting, and 
so instructive, that it will be well for us to be transported for awhile, and 
give this rogue the benefit of honest company. 

For many months I had seen a sullen lowering fellow, with cropped 
head, ironed-legs, and the motley garments of disgrace, driven forth at 
early morning with his gang of bad compeers ; a slave, toiling till night- 
fall in piling cannon-balls, and chipping off the rust with heavy ham- 
mers; a sentinel stood near with a loaded musket; they might not speak 



THE END OF THE HEARTLESS. 313 

lo each other, that miserable gang ; hope was dead among them ; life 
had no delights ; they wreaked their silent hatred on those hammered 
cannon-balls. The man who struck the fiercest, that sullen convict with 
the lowering brow, was our stock-jobber, John Dillaway. 

Soon after that foretaste of slavery at Woolwich, the ship sailed, 
freighted with incarnate crime ; her captain was a ruffian ; (could he 
help it with such cargoes?) her crew, the ofFscouring. of all nations; 
and the Chesapeake herself was an old rotten hull, condemned, after 
one more voyage, to be broken up ; a creaking, foul, unsafe vessel, full 
of rats, cockroaches, and other vermin. 

The sun glared ungenially at that blot upon the waters, breeding 
infectious disease ; the waves flung the hated burden from one to the 
other, disdainful of her freight of sin ; the winds had no commission for 
fair sailing, but whistled through the rigging crossways, howling in the 
ears of many in that ship, as if they carried ghosts along with them : 
the very rocks and reefs butted her off the creamy line of breakers, as 
sea-unicorns distorting ; no affectionate farewell blessed her departure ; 
no hearty welcomes await her at the port. 

And they sailed many days as in a floating hell, hot, miserable, and 
cursing; the scanty meal was flung to them like dog's-meat, and they 
lapped the putrid water from a pail ; gang by gang for an hour they 
might pace the smoking deck, and then and thence were driven down to 
fester in the hold for three-and-twenty more. O, those closed hatches by 
night ! what torments were the kernel of that ship ! Suffocated by the 
heat and noxious smells ; bruised against each other, and by each other's 
blows, as the black unwieldy vessel staggered about among the billows, 
the wretched mass of human misery wore away those tropical nights in 
horrid imprecation ; worse than crowded slaves upon the Spanish Main, 
from the blister of crime upon their souls, and their utter lack of hope- 
fulness for ever. 

And now, after all the shattering storms, and haggard sufferings, and 
degrading terrors of that voyage, they neared the metropolis of sin ; some 
town on Botany Bay, a blighted shore — where each man, looking at his 
neighbour, sees in him an outcast from heaven. They landed in droves, 
that ironed flock of men ; and the sullenest-looking scoundrel of them 
all was John Dillaway. 

There were murderers among his gang ; but human^passions, which 
had hurried them to crime, now had left them as if wrecked upon a lee 
shore — humbled and remorseful, and heaven's happier sun shed some 

27 



314 HEART. 

light upon their faces : there were burglars ; but the courage which 
could dare those deeds, now lending strength to bear the stroke of pun- 
ishment, enabled them to walk forth even cheerily to meet their doom 
of labour: there was rape; but he hid himself, ashamed, vowing better 
things: fiery arson, too, was there, sorry for his rash revenge: also, 
conspiracy and rebellion, confessing that ambition such as theirs had 
been wickedness and folly ; and common frauds, and crimes, and social 
sins; bad enough, God wot, yet hopeful ; but the mean, heartless, devel- 
ish criminality of our young Dagon beat them all. If to be hard-hearted 
were a virtue, the best man there was Dillaway. 

And now they were to be billeted off among the sturdy colonists as 
farm-servants, near a-kin to slaves ; tools in the rough hands of men who 
pioneer civilization, with all the vices of the social, and all the passions 
of the savage. And on the strand, where those task-masters congre- 
gated to inspect the new-come droves, each man selected according to 
his mind : the rougher took the roughest, and the gentler, the gentlest : 
the merry-looking field farmer sought out the cheerful, and the sullen 
backwoods settler chose the sullen. Dillaway's master was a swarthy, 
beetled -browed caitiff, who had worn out his own seven years of penalty, 
and had now set up tyrant for himself. 

As a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in a stagnant little clear- 
ing of the forest, our convict toiled continually — continually — like Cali- 
ban : all days alike ; hewing at the mighty trunk and hacking up the 
straggling branches ; no hope — no help — no respite ; and the iron of 
servile tyranny entered into his very soul. Ay — ay ; the culpi'it con- 
victed, when he hears in open court, with an impudent assurance, the 
punishment that awaits him on those penal shores, little knows the ter- 
rors of that sentence. Months and years — yea, haply to gray hairs and 
death, slavery unmitigated — uncomforted ; toil and pain ; toil and sor- 
row ; toil, and nothing to cheer ; even to the end, vain tasked toil. Old 
hopes, old recollections, old feelings, violently torn up by the roots. No 
familiar face in sickness, no patient nurse beside the dying bed : no hope 
for earth, and no prospect of heaven : but, in its varying phases, one 
gloomy glaring orb of ever-present hell. 

It grew intolerable — intolerable ; he was beaten, mocked, and almost 
a maniac. Escape — escape! Oh, blessed thought! into the wild free 
woods! there, with the birds and flowers, hill and dale, fresh air and 
liberty! Oh, glad hope — mad hope! His habitual cunning came to 
his aid ; he schemed, he contrived, he accomplished. The jutting heads 



THE END OF THE HEARTLESS. 315 

of the rivets having been diligently rubbed away from his galling fetter 
by a big stone — a toil of weeks — he one day stood unshackled, having 
watched his time to be alone. An axe was in his hand, and the 
saved single dinner of pea-bread. That beetled-browed task-master 
slumbered in the hut; that brother convict — (why need he care for him, 
too? every one for himself in this world) — that kinder, humbler, better 
man was digging in the open ; if he wants to escape, let him think of 
himself: John Dillaway has enough to take care for. Now, then; now, 
unobserved, unsuspected ; now is the chance ! Joy, life, and liberty ! 
Oh, glorious prospect — for this inland world is unexplored. 

He stole away, with panting heart, and fearfully exulting eye ; he 
ran — ran — ran, for miles — it may have been scores of them — till night- 
fall, on the soft and pleasant greensward under those high echoing woods. 
None pursued ; safe — safe ; and deliciously he slept that night beneath 
a spreading wattle-tree, after the first sweet meal of freedom. 

Next morning, waked up like the starting kangaroos around him (for 
John Dillaway had not bent the knee in prayer since childhood), off 
he set triumphant and refreshed : his arm was strong, and he trusted in it , 
his axe was sharp, and he looked to that for help ; he knew no other God. 
Off he set for miles — miles — miles : still that continuous high acacia wood, 
though less naturally park-like, often-times choked with briars, and here 
and there impervious a-head. Was it all this same starving forest to the 
wide world's end? He dug for roots, and found some acrid bulbs and 
tubers, which blistered up his mouth; but he was hungry, and ate them; 
and dreaded as he ate. Were they poisonous? Next to it, Dillaway; 
so he hurried eagerly to dilute their griping juices with the mountain 
streams near which he slept: the water was at least kindly cooling to 
his hot throat; he drank huge draughts, and stayed his stomach. 

Next morning, off again : why could he not catch and eat some of 
those half-tame antelopes? Ha! He lay in wait hours — hours, near 
the torrent to which they came betimes to slake their thirst : but their 
beautiful keen eyes saw him askance — and when he rashly hoped to 
hunt one down afoot, they went like the wind for a minute — then turned 
to look at him afar off, mockingly — poor, panting, baffled creeper. 

No ; give it up — this savoury hope of venison ; he must go despond- 
ently on and on ; and he filled his belly with grass. Must he really 
starve in this interminable wood ! He dreamt that night of luxurious 
city feasts, the turtle, turbot, venison, and champagne ; and then how 
miserably weak he woke. But he must on wearily and lamely, for ever 



316 HEART. 

through this wood — objectless, except for life and liberty. Oh, that he 
could meet some savage, and do him battle for the food he carried ; or 
that a dead bird, or beast, or snake lay upon his path; or that one of 
those skipping kangaroos would but come within the reach of his oft- 
aimed hatchet ! No : for all the birds and flowers, and the free wild 
woods, and hill, and dale, and liberty, he was starving — starving; so he 
browsed the grass as Nebuchadnezzar in his lunacy. And the famished 
wretch would have gladly been a slave again. 

Next morning, he must lie and perish where he slept, or move on : he 
turned to the left, not to go on for ever ; probably, ay, too probably, he 
had been creeping round a belt. Oh, precious thought of change ! for 
within three hours there was light a-head, light beneath the tangled 
underwood : he struggled through the last cluster of thick bushes, long- 
ing for a sight of fertile plain, and open country. Who knows? are 
there not men dwelling there with flocks and herds, and food and plenty? 
Yes — yes, and Dillaway will do among them yet. You envious boughs, 
delay me not! He tore aside the last that hid his view, and found that 
he was standing on the edge of an ocean of sand — hot yellow sand to 
the horizon ! 

He fainted — he had like to have died ; but as for prayer — he only 
muttered curses on this bitter, famishing disappointment. He dared not 
strike into the wood again — he dared not advance upon that yellow sea 
exhausted and unprovisioned : it was his wisdom to skirt the wood ; and 
so he trampled along weakly — weakly. This liberty to starve is horrible ! 

Is it, John Dillaway? What, have you no compunctions at that Avord 
starve? no bitter, dreadful recollections? Remember poor Maria, that 
own most loving sister, wanting bread through you. Remember Henry 
Clements, and their pining babe; remember your own sensual feastings 
and fraudulent exultation, and how you would utterly have starved the 
good, the kind, the honest! This same bitter cup is filled for your own 
lips, and you must drink it to the dregs. Have you no compunctions, 
man ? nothing tapping at your heart ? for you must starve ! 

No! not yet — not yet! for chance (what Dillaway lyingly called 
chance) — in his moments of remorse at these reflections, when God had 
hoped him penitent at last, and, if he still continued so, might save him 
— sent help m he desert! For, as he reelingly trampled along on tlie 
rank herbage between this forest and that sea of sand, just as he was 
dying of exhaustion, his faint foot trod upon a store of life and health ! 
It was an Emeu's ill-protected nest; and he crushed, where he had 



THE END OF THE HEARTLESS. 



317 



trodden, one of those invigorating eggs^ Oh, joy — joy — no thanks — but 
sensual joy ! There were three of them, and each one meat for a day ; 
ash-coloured without, but the within — the within — full of sweet and 
precious yolk! Oh, rich feast, luscious and refreshing: cheer up — . 
cheer up : keep one to cross the desert with : ay — ay, luck will come 
at last to clever- Jack ! how shrewd it was of me to find those eggs ! 

Thus do the wicked forget thee, blessed God ! thou hast watched this 
bad man day by day, and all the dark nights through, in tender expect- 
ation of some good : Thou hast been with him hourly in that famishing 
forest, tempting him by starvation to — repentance ; and how gladly did 
Thine eager mercy seize this first opportunity of half-formed penitence 
to bless and help him — even him, liberally and unasked ! Thanks to 
Thee — thanks to Thee ! Why did not that man thank Thee ? Who more 
grieved at his thanklessness than Thou art ? Who more sorry for the 
righteous and necessary doom which the impenitence of heartlessness 
drags down upon itself? 

And Providence was yet more kind, and man yet more ungrateful ; 
mercy abounding over the abundant sin. For the famished vagrant dill- 
gently sought about for more rich prizes ; and, as the manner is of those 
unnatural birds to leave their eggs carelessly to the hatching of the sun- 
shine, he soon stumbled on another nest. "Ha — ha!" said he, "clever 
Jack Dillaway of Broker's alley isn't done up yet: no — no, trust him 
for taking care of number one ; now then for the desert ; with these 
four huge eggs and my trusty hatchet, deuce take it, but I'll man- 
age somehow!" 

Thus, deriving comfort from his bold hard heart, he launched unhesi- 
tatingly upon that sea of sand : with aching toil through the loose hot 
soil he ploughed his weary way, footsore, for leagues — leagues — length- 
ened leagues ; yellow sand all round, before, and on either hand, as far 
as eye can stretch, and behmd and already in the distance that terrible 
forest of starvation. But what, then, is the name of this burnt plain, 
unwatered by one liquid drop, unvisited even by dews in the cold dry 
night ? Have you not yet found a heart, man, to thank Heaven for that 
kind supply of recreative nourishment, sweet as infant's food, the rich 
delicious yolk, which bears up still your halting steps across this world 
of sand ? No heart — no heart of flesh — but a stone — a cold stone, and 
hard as yonder rocky hillock. 

He climbed it for a view — and what a view ! a panorama of perfect 
desolation, a continent of vegetable death. His spirit almost failed within 

27* 



318 HEART. 

him ; but he must on— on, or perish where he stood. Taking no count 
of time, and heedless as to whither he might wander, so it be not back 
again along that awful track of liberty he longed for, he crept on by 
little and little, often resting, often dropping for fatigue, night and day — 
day and night: he had made his last meal; helaid him down to die — 
and already the premonitory falcon flapped him with its heavy wing. 
Ha! what are all those carrion fowls congregated there for? Are they 
battening on some dead carcase ? O, hope — hope ! there is the smell 
of food upon the wind : up, man, up — battle with those birds, drive them 
away, hew down that fierce white eagle with your axe ; what right have 
they to precious food, when man, their monarch, starves? So, the poor 
emaciated culprit seized their putrid prey, and the scared fowls hov- 
ered but a little space above, waiting instinctively for this new victim : 
they had not left him much — it was a feast of remnants — pickings from 
the skeleton of some small creature that had perished in the desert — a 
wombat, probably, starved upon its travels; but a royal feast it was to 
that famishing wretch : and, gathering up the remainder of those price- 
less morsels, which he saved for some more fearful future, again he crept 
upon his way. Still the same, night and day — day and night — for he 
could only travel a league a-day : and at length, a shadowy line between 
the sand and sky — far, far off, but circling the horizon as a bow of hope. 
Shall it be a land of plenty, green, well-watered meadows, the pleasant 
homes of man, though savage, not unfriendly? O hope, unutterable! 
or is it (0 despair!) another of those dreadful woods, starving solitude 
under the high-arched gum-trees. 

Onward he crept ; and the line on the horizon grew broader and darker : 
onward, still ; he was exulting, he had conquered, he was bold and hard 
as ever. He got nearer, now within some dozen miles ; it was an indis- 
tinct distance, but green at any I'ate ; huzza — never mind night-fall ; he 
cannot wait, nor rest, with this Elysium before him : so he toiled along 
through all the black night, and a friendly storm of rain refreshed him, 
as his thirsty pores drank in the cooling stream. Aha! by morning's 
dawn he should be standing on the edge of that green paradise, fresh as 
a young lion, and no thanks to any one but his own shrewd indomi- 
table self. 

Morning dawned — and through the vague twilight loomed some hio-h 
and tangled wall of green foliage, stretching seemingly across the very 
world. Most sickening sight! a matted, thorny jungle, one of those 
primeval woods again, but closer, thicker, darker than the park-like one 



THE END OF THE HEARTLESS. 319 

before ^ rank and prickly herbage in a rotting swamp, crowding up about 
the state/y trees. Must he battle his way through ? Well, then, if it must 
be so, he must and will ; any thing rather than this hot and blistering sand. 
If he is doomed by fate to starve, be it in the shade, not in that fierce sun. 
So, he weakly plied his hatchet, flinging himself with boldness on that 
league-thick hedge of thorns ; his way was choked with thorns ; he strug- 
gled under tearing spines, and through prickly underwood, and over tangled 
masses of briery plants, clinging to him every where around, as with a 
thousand taloned claws ; he is exhausted, extrication is impossible ; he 
beats the tough creepers with his dulled hatchet, as a wounded man 
vainly ; ha ! one effort more — a dying effort — must he be impaled upon 
these sharp aloes, and strange-leafed prickly shrubs; they have caught 
him there, those thirsty poisoned hooks, innumerable as his sins; his 
way, whichever way he looks, is hedged up high with thorns — thick-set 
thorns — sturdy, tearing thorns, that he cannot battle through them. 
Emaciated, bleeding, rent, fainting, famished, he must perish in the mer- 
ciless thicket into which hardheartedness had flung him ! 

Before he was well dead, those flapping carrion fowls had found him 
out; they were famishing too, and half forgot their natural distaste for 
living meat. He fought them vainly, as the dying fight ; soon there were 
other screams in that echoing solitude, besides the screeching falcons ! 
and when they reached his heart (if its matter aptly typified its spirit), 
that heart should have been a very stone for hardness. 

So let the selfish die ! alone, in the waste howling wilderness ; so let 
him starve uncared-for, whose boast it was that he had never felt for 
other than himself — who mocked God, and scorned man — whose motto 
throughout life, one sensual, unsympathizing, harsh routine, was this : 
"Take care of the belly, and the heart will take care of itself!" — who 
never had a wish for other's good, a care for other's evil, a thought 
beyond his own base carcase ; who was a man — no man — a wretch, 
without a heart. So let him perish miserably ; and the white eagles 
pick his skeleton clean in yonder tangled jungle! 



320 HEART. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

WHEREm MATTERS ARE CONCLUDED. 

Certain folks at Ballyriggan, near Belfast, observe to me, with not a 
little Irish truth, that it is by no means easy to conclude a history never 
intended to be finished. It so happens that my good friends the clan 
Clements are still enjoying life and all it svi^eets, beneficent in their 
generation ; and as for their hearts' affections, that story without an end 
will still be heard, ringing on its happy changes, in the presence of God 
and of his immortal train, when every reader of these records shall have 
been to this world dead. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and 
within, it is life's well-spring. Death is but a little narrow gate, in 
a dark rough pass among the mountains, where each must go alone, one 
by one, in solemn silence, for the avalanches hanging overhead ; one by 
one, in breathless caution, for there is but barely a footing ; one by one, 
for none can help his brother on the track : the steady eye of faith, the 
firm foot of righteousness, the staflf of hope to comfort and support — 
these be the only helps. And each one carries with him, as his sole 
possession on that lonely journey, no heaps of wealth— no trappings of 
honour; these burdens of the camel must all be lifted off*, ere he can 
struggle through that gully in the rocks — "The Needle's Eye ;" but the 
sole possession which every wayfarer must take with him into those 
broad plains where only Spirit can be seen, and Sin no longer can be 
hid, is the shrine of his affections, the casket of his precious pearls in 
life — his Heart, unmantled and unmasked. And if in time it had been 
a well of love, flowing towards God in penitence, and irrigating this 
world's garden with charities and blessed works, that little sparkling 
stream shall then burst forth from this rocky portal of the grave, a river 
of joy and peace, to gladden even more the sunny provinces of heaven. 
For the heart with its affections, never dieth : they may, indeed, flow 
inward, and corrupt to selfishness ; becoming then, in lieu of fountains 
of waters, gushing forth to everlasting life, a bottomless volcano of hot 
lava, tempestuous and involved, setting up the creature as his own foul 
god, and living the perpetual death-bed of the damned ; or they may 
nobly burst the banks of self, and, rising momentarily higher and higher, 
till every Nilometer is drowned, will seek for ever, with expanding 
strength, to reach the unapproachable level of that source in the Most 



MATTERS CONCLUDED. 321 

Highest whence they originally sprung. For this cause, the kindest 
fatherly word which ever reached man's ear, the surest scheme for hap- 
piness that ever touched his reason, was one from God's own heart — 
"My son, give me thy heart." 

They lived upon the blessing of that Word, our noble, kindly pair. 
To enlarge upon the thought as respects a better world is well for those 
who will : for if He that made the eye and framed the ear, by the 
stronger argument Himself must see and hear, so he that fashioned love- 
liness and moulded the affections, how well -deserving must that Beauti- 
ful Spirit be of his rational creature's heart! Away with mawkish 
cant and stale sentimentalities ! let us think, and speak, and feel as men, 
framed by nature's urgent law to the lovely and to hate the vile. Oh, 
that the advocates for Him, the Good One, would oftener plead His 
cause by the human affections — by generosity, by sympathy, by gentle- 
ness and patience, by self-denying love, and soul absolving beauty ; for 
these are of the essence of God, and their spiritual influence on reaso 
child writes upon his heart that warmer code of morals, which the iron 
tool of threatening availeth not to grave upon the rock, while the voice 
of love can change that rock into a spring of water. 

But we must descend from our altitudes, and speak of lower things ; 
for the time and space forbid much longer intrusion on your courtesy. 
A few ravelling threads of this our desultory tale have yet to be gath- 
ered up, as tidily as may be. Suffer, then, such mingling of my 
thoughts : the web I weave has many threads, woven with divers colours. 
Human nature is nothing if not inconsistent ; and I have no more notion 
of irreverence in turning from a high topic to a low one, than a bee may 
be fancied to have of irrelevant idleness in flitting from the sweet violet 
to the scented dahlia. We may gather honey out of every flower. 
Have you not often noticed, that riches generally come to a man, when 
he least stands in need of them ? Directly a middle-aged heir succeeds 
to his long-expected heritage, half-a-dozen aunts and second cousins are 
sure to die off and leave him super-abounding legacies, any one of which 
would have helped his poverty stricken youth, and made him of inde- 
pendent mind throughout his servile manhood. The other day (the idea 
remains the same, though the fact is to be questioned) the richest lord in 
Europe dug up a chest of hoarded coins, many thousand pound's worth, 
simply because he didn't want it : and, if such particularization were 
not improper or invidious, you or I might name a brace of friends 
a-piece, who, having once lacked bread in the career of life, suddenly 
V 



322 HEART. 

have found themselves monopolizing two or three great fortunes. As 
too few things are certain, novel writers less like truth in their descrip- 
tions, than where ample wealth falls upon the hero just in the nick of 
time. Providence intends to teach by penury : yes, and by prosperity 
too : and we almost never see the reward given, or the no less reward 
withheld, just as the scholar has begun to spell his lesson, and before he 
has had the chance of getting it by heart. 

That another death should occur, in the progress of this tale, must be 
counted for no fault of mine; especially as I am not about to introduce 
another death-bed. One need not have the mummy always at our 
feasts. Surely, too, these deaths have ever been on fit occasion: one 
broken heart ; one bereaved, yet comforted ; and one which perished in its 
sin of uttermost hard-heartedness. And here, if any insurance clerk, or 
other interested person, will show cause why Mrs. Jane Mackenzie 
should not die at the age of ninety-two, I would keep her alive if I could ; 
but the fact is, I cannot : she died. Henry Clements never saw her, any 
more that I, nor dear Maria. But that was no earthly reason wherefore — 

First, Maria should not bewail the dear old relative's loss with all her 
heart and eyes, and children and household in mourning. 

Nor, secondly, wherefore Mrs. Jane Mackenzie, aforesaid, of Bally- 
riggan, province of Ulster, should not leave her estate of Ballyriggan, 
aforesaid, and a vast heap of other property, to the only surviving though 
distant scion of her family, Henry Clements. 

Nor, thirldy, wherefore I should not record the fact, as duly bound in 
my capacity of honest historian. 

Tnis accession of property was large, almost overwhelming, when 
added to Maria's patrimony of three thousand a-year, the produce of 
St. Benet's Sherehog: for besides and beyond a considerable breadth 
of Irish acres, sundry houses in Belfast, and an accumulation of half- 
forgotten funds, the Bank of England found itself necessitated (from 
particular circumstances of ill-caution in its servants) to refund tlie 
whole of that twelve thousand forty-three pounds bank annuities, which 
Jack Dillaway and his ladies had already made away with. 

Rich, however, as Clements had become, he felt himself only as a 
great lord's steward to help a needy world ; and I never heard that he 
spent a sixpence more upon himself, his equipage, or his family, from 
being some thousands a-year richer: though I certainly did hear that, 
owinw to this legacy, every tenant upon Ballyriggan, and a vast uuhiIkm- 
of struggling families in Spitalfields and round about St. Benet's, hi d 



MATTERS CONCLUDED. 



323 



ample cause to bless Heaven and the good man of Finsbury square. 
As for dear Maria, it rejoiced her generous heart to find that Henry 
(whose gentlemanly pride had all along been reproaching him for pau- 
perism) was now become pretty well her equal in wealth ; even as her 
humility long had known him her superior in mind, good looks, and 
good family. 

Another thread in my discourse, hanging loosely on the world, con- 
cerns our lady-legatees. What became of Miss Julia, after the safe and 
successful issue of that vengeful trial, I never heard : and, perhaps, it 
may be wise not to inquire : if she changed her name, she did not change 
her nature: and is probably still to be numbered among the sect of 
Strand peripatetics. 

But of Anna Bates I have pleasanter news to tell. With respect to 
repentance, let us be charitable, and hope, even if we cannot be so san- 
guine as firmly to believe ; but at any rate we may rest assured of an 
outward reformation, and an honest manner of life. The miracle hap- 
pened thus: After the trial and condemnation of Dillaway, poor Anna 
Bates felt entirely disappointed that she had not the chance of better 
things presented to her mind by transportation; the two approvei's, to 
her dismay — poor thing ! — were givaciously pardoned for their evidence ; 
and, whereas, the one of them returned to her old courses more devotedly 
than ever, the other resolved to make one strong effort to extricate her 
loathing self from the gulf in which she lay. Fortunately for her, our 
Maria had the heart to pity and to help a frail and fallen sister; and when 
the poor disconsolate woman, finding her to be the sister of that evil para- 
mour, came to Mrs. Clements in distress, revealing all her past sins and 
sorrows, and pleading for some generous hand to lift her out of that mis- 
eiable state, she did not plead in vain. Maria spurned her not away, 
nor coldly disbelieved her promise of amendment; but, taking counsel 
of her husband, she gave the poor woman sufficient means of setting up 
a milliner's shop at Hull, where, under her paternal name of Stelling. 
burne, our Fleet street lady-legatee still survives, earning a decent live- 
lihood, and little suspected amongst her kindly neighbours of ever having 
been much worse than a strictly honest woman. 

For another thread, if the reader, in his ample curiosity, wishes to be 
informed how it became possible for me to learn the fate of Dillaway, 
let him know, that up to the hour of escape, I derived it easily from 
living witnesses ; and thereafter, that certain settlers, having set out to 
explore the country, found a human skeleton stretched upon a thicket 



324 HEART. 

which, from the dihris of convicts' clothes, and the hatchet stamped with 
his initials, was easily decided to be that bad man's. It always had 
struck me, as a remarkable piece of retribution, that whereas John 
made Austral shares a plea for ruining Henry Clements, a howling 
Austral wilderness was made the means of starving him. Maria never 
heard what became of her brother ; but still looks for his return some 
day with affectionate and earnest expectation. 

Another little matter to be mentioned is the fact, that Henry Clements, in 
his leisure from business, and freedom from care, resolved to attain some 
literary glories; and first, he published his now-renowned tragedy of 
' Boadicea,^ with his name at length, giving a mint of proceeds to that very 
proper charity the Theatrical Fund. Secondly, he followed up his tragic 
triumph by a splendid ' Caractacus,' by way of a companion picture. 
Thirdly, he turned to his maligned law -treatise on Defence, and boldly 
published a capital vindication thereof, flinging down his gauntlet to the 
judges both of law and literature. It was strange, by the way, and 
instructive also, to find with what a deferential air the wealthy writer now 
was listened to ; and how meekly both ' Watchman ' and ' Corinthian ' 
kissed the smiling hand of the literary genius, who — gave such sumptu- 
ous dinners; for Henry, of his rnere kindness, (not bribery — don't 
imagine him so weak,) now that he was known as a Maecenas amongst 
authors, made no invidious distinctions between literary magnates, but 
effectually overcame evil with good by his hearty hospitality to ' Corin- 
thian ' and ' Watchman ' editors, as well as to other potent wielders of the 
pen of fame, who had erst-while. favoured the productions of his genius. 

The last dinner he gave, I, an old friend of the family, was present: 
and when the ladies went up-stairs, I had, as usual, the honour of enact- 
ing vice. It was according to Finsbury taste and custom, to produce 
toasts and speeches; whether cold high-breeding would have sanctioned 
this or not, little matters: it was warm and cordial, and we all liked it; 
moreover, finding ourselves at Rome, we unanimously did as other 
Romans do : and this I take to be politeness. Among the speeches, that 
which proposed the health of the host and hostess caused the chiefest 
roar of clamorous joy : it was a happy-looking friend who spoke, and 
what he said was much as follows : 

"Clements, my dear fellow, you are the happiest man I know — 
except myself; at least, in one thing I am happier — for I can call you 
friend, whereas you can only return the compliment with such a sorry 
substitute as I am." 



MATTERS CONCLUDED. 325 

[This ingenious flattery was much ridiculed afterwards ; but I pledge 
my word the man intended what he said ; moreover, he went on, utterly 
regardless of surrounding critics, in all the seeming egotism of a warm 
and open heart.] 

"Clements — I cannot help telling you how heartily I love you;" 
(Hear, hear !) " and I wish I had known you thirty years instead of three, 
to have said so with the unction of my earliest recollections: but we 
cannot help antiquity, you know. Let us all the rather make up now 
by heartiness for all lost time. I think, nay, am sure, that I speak the 
language of all present in telling you I love you:" (an enormous hear- 
hearing, which rose above the drawing-room floor; Harry Clements 
singularly distinguished himself, in proving how he loved his father; a 
fine young fellow he grows too, and I wish, between ourselves, to catch 
him for a son-in-law some day;) — "Yes, Clements, I do love you, and 
your children, and your wife, for there is the charm of heart about you 
all : in yourself, in your Maria, in that fine frank youth, and those dear 
warm girls up stairs" (every word was bravoed to the echo), "in every 
one of you, all the chai'ities and amenities, all the kindnesses and the 
cheerfulness of life appear to be embodied ; you love both God and man ; 
the rich and the poor alike may bless you, Clements, and your admirable 
Maria ; whilst, as for yourselves, you may both well thank God, whose 
mercy made you what you are." 

Clements hid his face, and Harry sobbed with joyfulness. 

" Friends ! a toast and sentiment, with all the honours : ' This happy 
family ! and may all who know them now, or come to hear of them in 
future, cultivate as they do all the home affections, and acknowledge 
that there is no wealth of man's, which may compare with riches of 
the heart.' " 

28 



THE END OF HEART. 



AN A UTH 1('S UN D; 



THE BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES: 



'A BOOKFUL OF BOORS," OR "THIRTY BOOKS IN ONE." 



EDITKD BY 



M. F. TUPPER, ESQ., M. A. 



En un mot, mes amis, je ii'ai entrepis de vous coiitenter tous en general ; ainsi, mil et 
autres en particulier ; et par special, moymfime." — PASciLi>;K. 



HARTFORD : 

PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. 

1853. 



ANNOUNCEMENT. 



BY THE EDITOR. 



The writer of this strange book (a particular friend of mine) came to me a few 
mornings ago with a very happy face and a very blotty manuscript. " Congratulate 
me," he began, " on having dispersed an armada of head-aches hitherto invincible, on 
having exorcised my brain of its legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming 
thoughts that used to persecute my solitude ; I can now lie dowr. as calmly as the 
lamb, and rise as gayly as the lark ; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found 
Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his strangled 
snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows, hogweed, and wild-parsley 
of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet looks like a rich meadow ; I am free, 
happy, well at ease: argal, an thou lovest me, congratulate." 

Wider and wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober friend so 
voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it was a set speech, prepared 
for an impromptu occasion ; nevertheless, as he was clearly in an enviable state of 
disenthraldom from thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. 
And then this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache ! here was an anodyne 
infinitely precious to one so brain -feverish as I: had all this pleasure and comfort arisen 
from such common-place remedials as a dear young lover's courtesy or a deceased 
old miser's codicil, I should long ago have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, 
my friend was never known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in 
the discovery ; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was naturally 

enough exhibiting itself iu a " What on earth 1" he broke out with the abruptness 

of an Abernethy, " Read my book." 

Well, I did read it ; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound, can readily 
believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very small portion of older mate- 
rial, it had been at chance intervals rapidly thrown off in a couple of months, (the old 
current-quill style,) chiefly with the view of relieving a too prolific brain : it appeared 
to me a mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind ; an honest, indeed, but often useless 
exposure of multifarious fancies — some good, some bad, and not a few indifferent ; an 
incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand thoughts, little worth the pfinting, if 
the very writing were not indeed superfluous. Nevertheless, with all its faults, I 
thought the book a novelty, and liked it not the less for its off-hand fashion ; it had 
something of the free, fresh, frank air of an old-school squire at Christmas-tide, sug- 
gestive as his misletoe, cheerful as his face, and careless as his hospitality. Knowing 

28* 



330 A N iN O U N C E M E N T . 

then that my friend had been more than once an author — indeed, he tells us so himself 
— and perceiving, from innumerable symptoms, that he meditated putting also this 
before the world, I thought kindly to anticipate his wishes by proposing its pubhcation: 
but I was rather curtly answered with a " Did I suppose these gnats were intended to 
be shrined in amber? these mere minnows to be treated with the high consideration 
due only to potted char and while bait? these fleeting thoughts fixed in stone before 
that Gorgon-head, the public? these ephemeral fancies dropped into the true elixir of 

immortality, printer's-ink? these " I stopped him, for this other mighty mouthful 

of images betrayed the hypocrite — " Yes, I did." An involuntary smile assured me 
he did too, and the cause proceeded thus: first, a promise not to bwn the book; then 
a Bentley to the rescue, with accessory considerations ; and then, the due administration 
of a little wholesome flattery: by this time we had obtained permission, after modest 
reluctance pretty well enacted, to transform the deformity of manuscript into the well- 
proportioned elegance of print. But, this much gained, our author would not yield to 
any argument we could urge upon the next point, viz: leave to produce the volume, 
duly fathered with his name. " Not he indeed ; he loved quiet too well ; he might, it 
was true, secretly hke the bantling, but cared not to acknowledge it before a populous 
reading-world, every individual whereof esteems himself and herself competent to 
criticize!" Mr. Publisher, deeply disinterested, of course, bristled up at the notion of 
any thing anonymous; and the only alternative remaining was the stale expedient of 
an editor ; that editor, in brief, to be none other than myself, a very palpable-obscure : 
and let this excuse my name upon the title-page. 

Now, as editor, I have had to do — what seems, by the way, to be regarded by 
collective wisdom as the best thing possible — nothing : my author would not suflTer the 
change of a syllable, for all his seeming carelessness about the thing, as he called it ; 
so, I had no more for my part than humbly to act the Helot, and try to set decently 
upon the public tables a genuine mess of Spartan porridge. 

' M. F. T. 

Alhury, Guildford. 



AN AUTHOR'S MIND: 



THE 



BOOK OF TITLE-PAGES. 



A RAMBLE. 

In these days of universal knowledge, schoolmaster and scholars all 
abroad together, quotation is voted pedantry, and to interpret is accounted 
an impertinence ; yet will I boldly proclaim, as a mere fact, clear to the 
perceptions of all it may concern, " This book deserves richly of the 
Sosii." And that for the best of reasons: it is not only a book, but a 
book full of books ; not merely a new book, but a little-library of new 
books ; thirty books in one, a very harvest of epitomized authorship, the 
cream of a whole fairy dairy of quiescent post-octavos. It is not — O, 
mark ye this, my Sosii, (and by the way, gentle ladies, these were wor- 
shipful booksellers of old, the Murrays and the Bentleys of imperial 
Rome,) — it is not the dull concreted elongation of one isolated hackneyed 
idea — supposing in every work there he one, a charitable hypothesis — 
wire-drawn, and coaxed, and hammered through three regulation 
volumes ; but the scarcely-more-than-hinted abstractions of some forty 
thousand flitting notions — hasty, yet meditative Hamlets ; none of those 
lengthy, drawling emblems of Laertes — driven in flocks to the net of the 
fowler, and penned with difficult compression within these modest limits. 
So "goe forth, littel boke," and make thyself a friend among those good 
husbandmen, who tend the trees of knowledge, and bring their fruit to 
the world's market. 

Now, reader, one little preliminary parley with you about myself: 
here beginneth the trouble of authorship, but it is a trouble causing ease ; 
ease from thoughts — thoughts — thoughts, which never cease to make 
one's head ache till they are fixed on paper ; ease from dreams by night 
and reveries by day, (thronging up in crowds behind, like Deucalion's 



332 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

children, or a serried host in front, like Jason's instant army,) harassing 
the brain, and struggling for birth, a separate existence, a definite life ; 
ease, in a cessation of that continuous internal hum of aerial forget-me- 
nots, clamouring to be recorded. O, happy unimaginable vacancy of 
mind, to whistle as you walk for want of thought! O, mental holiday, 
now as impossible to me, as to take a true school-boy's interest in rounders 
and prisoner's base ! An author's mind — and remember always, friend, 
I write in character, so judge not as egotistic vanity merely the well 
playing of my roZe— such a mind is not a sheet of smooth wax, but a 
magic stone indented with fluttering inscriptions ; no empty tenement, 
but a barn stored to bursting : it is a painful pressure, constraining to 
write for comfort's sake ; an appetite craving to be satisfied, as well as 
a power to be exerted ; an impetus that longs to get away, rather than a 
dormant dynamic : thrice have I (let me confess it) poured forth the 
alleviating volume as an author, a real author — real, because for very 
peace of mind, involuntarily ; but still the vessel fills ; still the indige- 
nous crop springs up, choking a better harvest, seeds of foreign growth ; 
still those Lernsean necks sprout again, claiming with many mouths to 
explain, amuse, suggest, and controvert — to publish invention, and pro- 
scribe error. Truly, it were enviable to be less apprehensive, less 
retentive ; to be fitted with a colander-mind, like that penal cask which 
forty-nine Danaides might not keep from leaking ; to be, sometimes at 
least, suffered for a holiday to ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. 
Memory, imagination, zeal, perceptions of men and things, equallj' with 
rank and riches, have often cost their , full price, as many mad have 
known ; they take too much out of a man — fret, wear, worry him ; to 
be irritable, is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; 
the crowd of internal imagery makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a 
haunted hunted man : minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn 
rends one of so delicate a texture ; they cannot estimate the wish that a 
duller sword were in a tougher scabbard ; the river, not content with 
channel and restraining banks, overflows perpetually; the extortionate 
exacting armies of the Ideal and the Causal persecute my spirit, and I 
would make a patriot stand at once to vanquish the invaders of my peace : 
I write these things only to be quit of them, and not to let the crowd 
increase; I have conceived a plan to destroy them all, as Jehu and 
Elijan with the priests of Baal ; I feel Malthusian among my mental 
nurselings ; a dire resolve has filled me to effect a premature destruc- 
tion of the literary populace superfoetating in my brain — plays, novels, 



A R A M B L E . ' 333 

essays, tales, homilies, and rhytlimicals ; for ethics and poetics, politics 
and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators 
of maltreated Aristotle : I will exhibit them in their state chaotic ; 1 
will addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp; I will reveal, and 
secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not 
batten on me. 

The world is too full of books, and I yearn not causelessly to add more 
than this involuntary unit: bottles, bottles — invariable bottles — was the 
one idea of a most clever Head at Nieder-Selters ; books, books — accu- 
mulating books — press upon my conscience in this literary London : 
despairing auctioneers hate the sound, ruined publishers dread it, sur- 
feited readers grumble at it, and the very cheese-monger begins to be an 
epicure as to which grand work is next to be demolished. Friendships 
and loves tremble at the daily recurrence of "Have you read this?" and 
"Mind you buy that;" wise men shun a blue-belle, sure that she will 
recommend a book ; and the yet wiser treat themselves to solitary con- 
finement, that they may not have to meet the last new batch of authors, 
and be obliged to purchase, if not to peruse, their never-ending books. 
I fear to increase the plague, to bo convicted an abettor of great evils, 
though by the measure of a little one. I am infected, and I know it : 
but for science-sake I break the quarantine, and in my magnanimity 
would be victimized unknown, consigning to a speedy grave this useless 
offspring, together with its too productive parent, and saving of a race 
so hopeless little else than their predetermined names — in fact, their 
title-pages. 

But is that indeed little? Speak, authors with piles of ready-written 
copy, is not the theme (so often carried out beyond, or beside, or even 
against its original purpose) less perplexing than the after-thought thesis? 
Bear witness, readers, bit by a mysterious advertisement in the ^Morn- 
ing Post,' are names, indeed, not matters of much weight? Press for- 
ward, Sosii aforesaid, and answer me truly, is not a title-page the better 
jiart of many books? Cheap promises of stale pleasure, false hopes of 
dull interest, imprimaturs of deceived fancy, lying visions of the future 
unfulfilled, title-pages still do good service to the cause of — bookselling. 

And, to commence, let me elucidate mine own — I mean the first, the 
head and front of this offending phalanx — mine own, par excellence, ^ An 
Authors Mind ;' such in sooth it shall be found, for richer or poorer, for 
better or for worse ; not of selfish, but of common application ; not so 
much individually of mine own, as generically of authors; a medley 



334 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

of crudities; an undigested mass, as any in the maw of Polypheme; a 
fermenting hotchpotch of half-formed things, illustrative, among other 
matters, of the Lucretian theory, those close-cohering atoms ; a farrago of 
thoughts, and systems of thoughts, in most admired disorder, which would 
symbolize the Corpernican astronomy, with its necessary clash of whirl- 
ing orbs, about as well as the intangible chaos of Bcrkeleyan metaphysics. 

So much then on the moment for the monosyllable "Mind ;" — whereof 
followeth, indeed, all the more hereafter; but — "An author's?" — what 
author's? You would see my patent of such rank, my commission to 
wear such honourable uniform. Pr'ythee be content with simple 
assurance that it is so ; consider the charm of unsatisfied curiosity, and 
pry not; let me sit unseen, a spectator; for this once I would go in 
domino. Heretofore, "credit me, fair Discretion, your Affability" hath 
achieved glory, and might Solomonize on its vanity at least as well as 
poor discomfited, discovered Sir Piercie Shafton : heretofore, I have 
stood forth in good causes, with helm unbarred, and due proclamation 
of name, style, and title, an avowed author; and might sermonize 
thus upon success, that a little censure loseth more friends than much 
praise winneth enemies. So now, with visor down, and a white shield, 
as a young knight-candidate unknown, it pleases my leisure to take my 
pastime in the tourney : and so long as in truthful prowess I bear me 
gallantly and gently, who is he that hath a right to unlatch my helmet, 
or where is the herald that may challenge my rank? Nevertheless, 
inquisitive, consider the mysteries that lie in the Turkish-looking sobri- 
quet of "Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict inten- 
tion: I never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid him- 
self in "Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even 
so, (but that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps iiiul 
fault with my Mussulman agnomen ; still you and I equally participate 
in this shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key 
to unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less saitl 
of so diaphanous a mystery, the better. 

And let me remark this of the mode anonymous; a mode, indeed, to 
purposes of shame, and slander, and falsity of all kinds too often pros- 
tituted : for the present, bear with it ; sometimes it is well to go disguised, 
and the voice of one unseen lacks not eager listeners; we address your 
judgment, unbiased by the prejudice or sanction of a name: we put 
liirth, lightly and negligently, those lesser matters which opportunity 
haiii not yet matured; we escape the nervous pains, the literary p( lilp 



A RAMBLE. 335 

of the hardier acknowledged. Only of this one thing be sure ; we— 
(no, I; why should unregal, unhierarchal I affect pluralities?) — I hope 
to keep inviolate, as much when masked as when avowed, the laws of 
truth, charity, sincerity, and honour; and, although, among my many 
booklets, the grave and the gay will be found in near approximation, I 
trust — will it offend any to tell them that I pray? — to do no ill service 
at any time to the cause of that true religion which resents not the neigh- 
bourhood of innocent cheerfulness. I show you, friend, my honest mind. 

I by itself, I ; odious mono-literal ; thinnest, feeblest, most insignificant 
of letters, I dread your egotistic influence as my bane ; they will not suf- 
fer you, nor bear witli a book so speckled with your presence. Still, 
world, hear me ; mercifully spare a poor grammarian the penance of 
perpetual third persons; let an individual tender conscience escape 
censure for using the true singular in preference to that imposing lie, 
the plural. Suffer a humble unit to speak of himself as I, and, once for 
all, let me permissively disclaim intentional self-conceit in the needful 
usage of isolated I-ship. 

These few preliminaries being settled, though I fear little to the satis- 
faction of either party concerned, let us proceed — further to prelimina- 
rize ; for you will find, even to the end, as you may have found out 
already from the beginning, that your white knight is mounted rather 
on an ambling preambling palfrey, tlian on any determinate charger; 
curveting and prancing, and rambling and scrambling at his own unman- 
aged will : scorning the bit and bridle, too hot to bear the spur, careless 
of listing laws, and wishing rather playfully to show his paces, than to 
tilt against a foe. 

An author's mind, qua author, is essentially a gossip ; an oral, ocular, 
imaginative, common-place-book : a pot. pourri mixed from the hortus 
SICCUS of education, and the greener garden of internal thought that 
springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain ; a compound 
of many metals flowing from the mental crucible as one — perchance a 
base alloy, perchance new, and precious, and beautiful as the fine brass 
of Corinth ; an accidental meeting in the same small chamber of many 
spiritual essences that combine, as by magnetism into some strange and 
novel substance ; a mixture of appropriations, made lawfully a man's 
own by labour spent upon the raw material ; corn-clad Egypt rescued 
from a burnt Africa by the richness of a swelling Nile — the black forest 
of pines changed into a laughing vineyard by skill, enterprise, and cul- 
ture — the mechanism of Frankenstein's man of clay, energized at length 
by the spark Promethean. 



33(5 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

And now, reader, do you begin to comprehend me, and my title ? ' An 
Author's Mind ' is first in the field, and, as with root and fruit, must take 
precedence of its booklets ; bear then, if you will, with this desultory 
anatomization of itself yet a little longer, and then in good time and 
moderate space you will come to the rudiments — bones, so to speak — of 
its many members, the frame-work on which its nerves and muscles 
hang, the names of its unborn children, the title-pages of its own 
unprinted books. 

Philosophers and fools, separately or together, as the case may be — 
for folly and philosophy not seldom form one Janus-head, and Minerva's 
bird seems sometimes not ill-fitted with the face of Momus — these and 
their thousand intermediates have tried in all ages to define that quaint 
enigma, Man: and I wot not that any pundit of literature hath better 
succeeded than the nameless, fameless man — or woman, was it? — or 
haply some innocent shrewd child — who whilom did enunciate that man 
IS A WRITING ANIMAL : true as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational 
as Euclid, a discerning, just, exclusive definition. That he is "capable 
of laughter," is well enough even for thy deathless fame, O Stagyrite ! 
but equally (so Buffbn testifies) are apes and monkeys, horses and 
hyenas ; whether perforce of tickling or sympathy, or native notions of 
the humorous, we will not stop to contend. That he actually is "an 
animal whose best wisdom is laughter," hath but little reason in it, 
Democrite, seeing there are such obvious anomalies among men as 
suicidal jesters and cachinating idiots; nevertheless, my punster of 
Abdera, thy whimsical fancy, surviving the wreck of dynasties, and too 
light to sink in the billows of oblivion, is now become the popular thouhgt, 
the fashionable dress of heretofore moping wisdom : crow, an thou wilt, 
jolly old chanticleer, but remember thee thou crowest on a dung- 
hill ; man is not a mere merry-andrew. Neither is he exclusively "a 
weeping animal," lugubrious Heraclite, no better definer than thy laugh- 
ter-loving foe : that man weeps, or ought to weep, the world within him 
and the world without him indeed bear testimony : but is he the only 
mourner in this valley of grief, this travailing creation? No, no; they 
walk lengthily in black procession : yet is this present writing not the 
fit season for enlarging upon sorrows ; we must not now mourn and be 
desolate as a poor bird grieving for its pilfered young — is Macduff"'s 
lamentable cry for his lost little ones, "All — what, all?" more piteous? 
— we must now indulge in despondent fears, like yonder hard-run stag, 
with terror in his eye, and true tears coursing down his melancholy 



A RAMBLE. 337 

face : we must not now mourn over cruelty and ingratitude, like that poor 
old Worn-out horse, crying — positively crying, and looking imploringly for 
merciful rest into man's iron face ; we must not scream like the wounded 
hare, nor beat against our cage like the wild bird prisoned from its free- 
dom. Moreover, Heraclite, even in thine own day thou mightest well 
have heard of the classic wailings of Philomel for Atys, or of con- 
sumptive Canens, that shadow of a voice, for her metamorphosed Pie, 
and have known that very crocodiles have tears : pass on, thy desolate 
definition hath not served for man. 

With flippant tongue a mercantile cosmopolite, stable in statistics and 
learned in the leger, here interposes an erudite suggestion: "Man is a 
calculating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but 
lie still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his nuts, 
the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons, and 
the sun his going down : moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying rulers,, 
and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly con- 
test so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling 
strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite — what a name of 
hungry omen for the imperial dcvourer ! — plausibly insinuates man to be 
"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with 
domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute ? It is true, 
the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa glazes 
his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a gamey 
taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics : but all this care, all this 
caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question, the kitchen 
is a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme : still, thou best 
of practical philosophers, caterer for daily dinners — man — man, I say, 
is not altogether a compact of edible commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag 
robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere congeries of food and pickles; 
moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame hath (or used to have, "in my 
warm youth, when George the Third was king,") automatons, [pray, 
observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre enough to indite automata; 
we conquering Britons stole that word among many others from poor 
dead Greece, who couldn't want it ; having made it ours in the singular, 
why be bashful about the plural ! So also of memorandums, omnibuses, 
[you remember Farren's ovmiBil] necropolises, gymnasiums, enkeiro- 
geneions, and other unlegacied property of dear departed Rome and 
Greece. All this, as you see, is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, 
Gingel has automatons, that will serve you up all kinds of delicate 
W 29 



I 



338 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

viands, pleasant meats, and choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing 
of Jones' patent all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus : 
no mine Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of 
extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion ; little, indeed, as you may 
en dit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for feed- 
ing. Remember yEsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, 
above them all, do not overlook the head. 

What think you then of "a featherless biped?" gravely suggests a 
rusty Plinyite. Absolute sir, and most obsolete Roman, doubtless you 
never had the luck to set eyes upon a turkey at Christmas ; the poor bare 
hipes implumis, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively ; 
ay, and risibilis to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old festi- 
val were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we 
to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the 
notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, thy 
thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, 
a candidate approved of Truth's most open borough ; for, in spite of 
secretary-birds with pens stuck clerk-like behind their ears (as useh ss 
an emblem of sinecure office as gold keys, silver, and coronation 
armour) — in spite of whole flights of geese, capable enough of saving 
capitols, but impotent to wield one of their own all-conquering quills — 
in spite, also, (keen-eyed categoi'ists, be to my faults in ratiocination a 
little blind, for very cheerfulness,) in spite, I say, of copying presses, 
manifold inditers, and automaton artists, man is a writing anibial. 

Wearily enough, you will think, have we disposed of this one defini- 
tion : but recollect, and take me for a son of leisure, an amateur tourist 
of Parnassus, an idling gatherer of way-side flowers in the vale of 
Thessaly, a careless, unbusied, "contemplative man," recreating himself 
by gentle craft on the banks of much-poached Helicon; and if you, my 
casual friend, be neither like-minded in fancy nor like-fitted in leisure, 
courteously consider that we may not travel well together: at this sta- 
tion let us stop, freely forgiving each other for mutual misliking ; to your 
books, to your business, to your fowling, to your feasting, to your mum- 
mery, to your nunnery — go: my track lays away from the high-roa;l, in 
and out between yonder hills, among thickets, mossy rocks, green hol- 
lows, high fern, and the tangled hair of hiding river-gods; I meet not 
pedlers and bagsmen, but stumble upon fawns just dropped, and do not 
scare their doting mothers; I quench not my noonday thirst with licry 
drams from a brazen tap, but, lying over the cold brook, drink to its 



A RAMBLE. 339 

musical Naiades; I walk no dusty roads of a working-day world, but flit 
upon the pleasant places of one made up of holidays. 

A truce to this truancy, and method be my maxim: let us for a 
moment link our reasonings, and solder one stray rivet ; man being a 
writing animal, there still remains the question, what is writing? Ah, 
there's the rub : a very comfortable definition would it be, if every pen- 
holder and pen-wiper could truly claim that kingship of the universe — 
that imagery of his Maker — that mystical, marvellous, immortal, intel- 
lectual, abstraction, manhood : but, what then is writing ? Ye tons of 
invoices, groaning shelves of incalculable legers, parchment abhorrences 
of rare Charles Lamb, we think not now of you; dreary piles of 
unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical expe- 
riences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations of 
learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in all 
stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack ! most of 
you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove ; poor 
deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only — it is yet a 
good purpose — to dress the common soil of human kindness, without 
attaining to t!he praise of wreaths and chaplets ever hanging in the Muses' 
temple ; flowers withered on the stalk, whose blooming beauty no lover's 
hand has dropped upon the sacred waters of Siloa, like the Hindoo's 
garland on her Ganges; prolix, vain, ephemeral letters (especially 
enveloped penny-posters) — and sparing only some few redolent of truth, 
wisdom, and affection — your bulky majority of flippant trash, staid 
advices, dunnings, hoaxings, lyings, and slanderings, degrade you to a 
lower rank than that we take on us to designate as "writing." 

And what, O what — "how poor is he that hath not patience!" — shall 
we predicate of the average viscera of circulating libraries? — abomi- 
nable viscera! — isn't that the word, my young Hippocrates? — A parley 
— a parley ! and the terms of truce are these : If this present pastime 
of mine (for pastime it is, so spurn not at its logic,) be mercifully looked 
on by you, lady novelists and male dittoes — yet truly there are giants 
in your ranks, as Scott, and Ward, and Hugo, and Le Sage, towering 
above ten thousand pigmies) — if I be spared your censures well-deserved, 
interchangeably as towai'd your authorships will I exercise the charita- 
ble wisdom of silence : a white flag or a white feather is my best alterna- 
tive in soothing or avoiding so terrible a host; and verily, to speak kinder 
of those whose wit, and genius, and graphic powers have so smoothed 
this old world's wrinkled face of care, many brilliant, many clever, 



340 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

many well-intended caterers to public amusement, throng your ill-ordered 
ranks : still, there are numbered to your shame as followers of the fool's- 
cap standard, the huge corrupting mass of depraved moralists, meagre 
trash-inditers, treacherous scandal-mongers, men about town who immor- 
talize their shame, and the dull, pernicious school of feather-brained 
Romancists: and take this sentence for a true one, a verum-dictum. 
But enough, there are others, and those not few, even far less veniable ; 
ye priers into family secrets — fawning, false guests at the great man's 
open house, eagerly jotting down with paricidal pen the unguarded con- 
versation of the hospitable board — shame on your treason, on its wages, 
iind its fame! ye countless gatherers and disposers of other men's stuff; 
cli.iels amang us takin' notes, an' faith, to prent 'em too, perpetually, 
without mitigation or remorse ; ye men of paste and scissors, who so 
often falsely, feebly, faithlessly, and tastelessly are patching into a Harle- 
quin whole the disjecta memhra of some great hacked-up reputation ; can 
such as ye are tell me what it is to write ? Writing is the concreted fruit 
of thinking, the original expression of new combinations of idea, the 
fresh chemical product of educational compounds long simmering in the 
mind, the possession of a sixth sense, distinguishing intelligence, and 
proclaiming it to the four winds; writing is not labour, but ease; not 
care, but happiness; not the petty pilferings of poverty, but the large 
overflowings of mental affluence ; it begs not on the highway, but gives 
great largess, like a king; it preys not on a neighbour's wealth, but 
enriches him; it may light, indeed, a lamp, at another's candle, but 
pays him back with brilliancy; it may borrow fire from the common 
stock, but uses it for genial warmth and noble hospitality. 

Remember well, good critic, (for verily bad there be,) my purposes 
in this odd volume — this queer, unsophisticate, uncultivated book : to 
empty my mind, to clear my brain of cobwebs, to lift off my head a 
porters's load of fancy articles ; and as in a bottle of bad champaign, 
the first glass, leaping out hurryskurry, at a railroad pace boiling a gal- 
lop, carries off with it bits of cork and morsels of rosin, even such is the 
first ebullition of my thoughts : take them for what they are worth, and 
blame no one but your discontented self that they are no better. Do 
you suppose, keen sir, that I am not quite self-conscious of their shallow- 
ness, utter contempt of subordination and selection, their empty reason- 
ing and pellucid vanity? — There I have saved you the labour of a 
sentence, and present you with a killing verdict for myself. After a 
little, perhaps, your patience may find me otherwise; of clearer flow, 



A RAMBLE. 34I 

but flatter flavour: these desultorinesses must first of all be immolated, 
for in their Ariel state they vex me, but I bind them down like slaving 
Calibans, by the magic of a pen ; and glad shall I be to victimize my 
monsters, eager to dissipate my musquito-like tormentors; yea, I would 
'■take up arms against a sea" — ["Arms against a sea?" dearest Shaks- 
peare, would that Theobald, or Johnson's stock-butt, "the Oxford Editor," 
had indeed interpolated that unconscionable image ! It has been sapi- 
ently remarked by some hornet of criticism, that "Shakspeare was a 
clever man;" but cleverer for must that champion stand forth who wars 
with any prospect of success upon seas; perhaps Xerxes might have 
thought of it — or your Astley's brigand, who rushes sword in hand on 
an ocean of green baize. Who shall cure me of parentheses?] — well, 
"a sea of troubles, [thoughts trouble us more than things — I sin again; 
close it;] and by opposing, end them;" that is, by setting forth these 
troublous thoughts opposite, in stately black and white, I clip their wings, 
and make them j)eck among my poultry, and not swarm about my heaven. 
But soon must I be more continuous ; turn over to my future title-pages, 
and spare your objurgation; a little more of this medley while the fit 
lasts, and afterward a staid course of better accustomed messes; a few 
further variations on this lawless theme of authorship, and then to try 
simpler tunes ; briefly, and yet to be grandiloquent, as a last round of 
this giddy climax, after noisy clashing Chaos there shall roll out, "per- 
feet, smooth, and round," green young worldlets, moving in quiet har- 
mony, and moulded with systematic skill. 

As an author, meanwhile, let man be most specifically character, 
ized : a real author, voluntary in his motives, but involuntary as regards 
his acts authorial ; full of matter, prolific of images and arguments, 
teeming, bursting, with something, much, too much, to say, and well 
witting how to say it : none of your poor devils compulsory from pov- 
erty — Plutus help them! — whose penury of pocket is (pardon me) too 
often equitably balanced by their emptiness of head ; and far less one 
of the lady's-maid school, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets 
at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's reti- 
cule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions 
for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the 
moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock : but a man who has 
it weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist, refute, 
enjoin: a man — frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen, as 
the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and 

29* 



342 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance 
upon carpet- work ; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy les- 
sons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the more 
ccerulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly geranium, 
miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs — these we mas- 
culine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have accounted 
your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sevigne and Somer- 
ville, Edgeworth and De Stael, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and 
Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less 
accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half- repeated 
slander: riding with the self-conceited cortege of male critics, my 
boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of leze majesty : but I repudiate the 
thought ; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship 
no fear : how much has man to learn from woman ! teach us still to look 
on humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on 
heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant 
calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers — making 
yet this wise use of the slander : never be so bold in authorship, as to haz- 
ard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural dependence : 
never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if you will, 
strew it with poises for the king of the tournament; it ill becomes you 
to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta, another 
Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing, return 
we to our author; to wit, a man, homo — a human, as they say in the west 
— with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen com- 
petent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly. 

Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting 
ourselves far better than our fathers, still, great was the wisdom of our 
ancestors: and that time-tried wisdom has given us three things that 
make a man; he must build a house, have a child, write a book: and 
of this triad of needfuls, who perceives not the superior and innate 
majesty of the last requisite? — "Build a house?" I humbly conceive, 
and steal my notion from the same ancestral source, that, in nine cases 
out of ten, fools build houses for wise men to live in ; besides, if houses 
be made a test of supreme manhood, your modern wholesale runner-up 
of lath and plaster tenements, warranted to stand seven years — provided 
quadrilles be excluded, and no larger flock of guests than six be per- 
mitted to settle on one spot — such a jackal for surgeons, such a reprobate 
provider for accident-wards as this, would be among our heroes, a prize- 



A RAMBLE. 343 

man, the flower of the species. "Children" too? — very happy, beau- 
tiful, heart-gladdening creations — God bless them all, and scatter those 
who love them not ! — but still for a proof of more than average humanity, 
somewhat common, somewhat overwhelming : rabbits beat us here, with 
all our fecundity, so offensive to Martineau and Malthus. But as to 
"books" — common enough, too, smirks gentle reader : pardon, courteous 
sir, most rare — at least in my sense ; I speak not of flat current shil- 
lings, but the bold medallions of ancient Syracuse ; I heed not the dull 
thousands of minted gold and silver, but the choice coin-sculptures of 
Larissa and Tarentum. There do indeed flow hourly, from an ever- 
welling press, rivers of words ; there are indeed shoaling us up on all 
sides a throng of well-bound volumes — novels, histories, poems, plays, 
memoirs, and so forth — to all appearance, books: but if by "books" be 
intended originality of matter, independent arguments, water turned 
wine, by the miracle of right-thinking, and not a mere re-decantering 
of dregs from other vessels — these many masqueraded forms, these 
multiplied images of little-varied likenesses, these Protean herds, will 
not stay to be counted, nor abide judgment, nor brook scrutiny, but will 
merge and melt by thousands into the one, or the two, real, original, ster- 
ling books. We live in a monopolylogue of authorship : an idea goes 
forth to the world's market-place well dressed from the wardrobe of some 
master-mind ; it greets the public with a captivating air, and straight- 
way becomes the rage ; it seems epidemical ; it comes out simulta- 
neously as a piece of political economy, a cookery-book, a tragedy, a 
farce, a novel, a religious experience, an abstract ism, or a concrete 
ology ; till the poor worn-out, dissipated shadow of a thought looks so 
feeble, thin, fashionably affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, 
bluff* old father, for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, 
that one or two minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak 
radically, been the true originators of a million volumes, which haply 
shall have sprung from the seed of some singular book, or of books 
counted in the dual. 

Indignant authors, be not merciless on my candour: I confess too 
much whereof I hold you guilty; I am one of yourselves, and I ques- 
tion not that few of you can beat me in a certain sort of — I will say, 
unintended, plagiarism; you are thieves — patience — I thieve from 
thieves ; Diogenes cannot see me any more than you ; you copy phrases, 
I am perpetually and unconsciously filching thoughts ; my entomological 
netted-scissors, wherewith I catch those small fowl on the wing, are 



344 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

always within reach ; you will never find me without well-tenanted pill- 
boxes in my pocket, and perhaps a buzzing captive or two stuck in 
spinning tliraldom on my castor ; you are petty larceners, I profess the 
like metier of intellectual abstractor ; you pilfer among a crowd of vol- 
umes, manuscripts, rare editions, conflicting commentators, and your 
success depends upon reusage of the old materials; whereas I sit alone 
and bookless in my dining-parlour, thinking over bygone fancies, recon- 
sidering exploded notions, appropriating all I find of lumber in the ware- 
house of my memory, and, if need be, without scruple, quietly digesting, 
as my special provender, the thoughts of others, originated ages ago. 

Is it necessary to remind you — dropping this lightsome vein for a 
precious moment — that I am penning away my "crudites," off"-hand, at 
the top of my speed? that my set intention is, if possible, to jot down 
instanter my heavy brainful, and feel for once light headed? — I stick to 
my title, '■An Author'' s Mind,'' and that with a laudable scorn of conceal- 
ment, and an honest purpose not to pretend it better or wiser than it is; 
then let no one blame me on the score of my fashion of speech, or my 
sarcasms mingled with charity ; for consistency with me were inconsistent. 

Neither let me, poor innocent, be accused of giving license to what a 
palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth time 
a cacoethes ; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth. Truly, 
my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the Scribbler ; 
though, for aught I know, himself in progress of transmigration; still, 
I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with leaves and chopped 
straw ; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is poured out pell-mell after 
this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it is fruit, though whether ripe or 
crude, or rotten, my husbandry takes little thought: the mixture serves 
for my cider-press, and, fermentation over, the product will be clarified. 
Judge me too, am I not consecutive ? I 've shown man to be a writing 
animal ; and writing, what it is and is not ; and meanwhile have been 
routing recreatively at pen's point whims, and fancies, and ideas, and 
images, pulled in manfully by head and shoulders : and now — after an 
episode, quite relevant and quite Herodotean, concerning the conse- 
quences of a bit of successful authorship on a man's scheme of life, to 
illustrate yet more the "author's mind" — I shall proceed to tell all men 
how many books I might, could, should, or would have written, but for 
reiterated and legitimated bids, and how near of kin I must esteem 
myself to the illustrious J. of nursery rhymes, being, as he is or was, 
"Mister Joe Jenkins, who played on the fiddle, and began twenty tunes, 



A RAMBLE. 345 

but left off in the middle." Moreover, no one can be ignorant of the 
close consanguinity recognised in every age and every dictionary 
between I and J. But now for the episode : 

If ever a toy were symbolical of life, that toy was a kaleidoscope: 
the showy bits of tinsel, coloured glass, silk, beads, and feathers, with 
here and there perchance a stray piece of iridescent ore or a pin, each, 
in its turn of ideal multiplication, filling successively the field of vision ; 
the trifling touch that will disenchant the fairest patterns ; the slightest 
change, as in chemical arithmetic, that will make the whole mixture a 
poison or a cordial. A man is vexed, the nerve of his equanimity 
thrillingly touched at the tender elbow, and forthwith his whole whole- 
some body writhes in pain; while, to speak morally, those useful 
reminders of life's frailty, the habitual side-thorns — spurs of diligence, 
incentives to better things — are exaggerated into sixfold spears, and ter- 
ribly stop the way, like long-lanced Achceans : a careless fit succeeds to 
one of spleen, and vanity well spangled, pretty baubles, stars and 
trinkets and trifles, fill their cycle, to magnetize with folly that rolling 
world the brain : another twist, and love is lord paramount, a paltry bit 
of glass, casually rose-coloured, shedding its warm blush over all the 
reflective powers: suddenly an overcast, for that marplot, Disappoint- 
ment, has obtruded a most vexatiously reiterated morsel of lamp-black : 
again Hope's little bit of blue paint makes azure rainbows all about the 
firmament of man's own inner world ; and at last an atom of gold-dust 
specks all the glasses with its lurid yellow, and haply leaves the old 
miser to his master-passion. So, ever changing day by day, every man's 
life is but a kaleidoscope. Stay; this simile is somewhat of the longest, 
but the whim is upon me, and I must have my way ; the fit possesses 
me to try a sonnet, and I shall look far for a fail'er thesis; he that 
hates verse — and the Muses now-a-days are too old-maidish to look 
many lovers — may skip it, and no harm done ; but one or two may 
like this stave on 

LIFE. 

I SAW a child with a kaleidoscope, 

Turning at will the tesselated field ; 

And straight my mental eye became unseal'd, 
I learnt of life, and read its horoscope : 

Behold, how fitfully the patterns change! 
The scene is azure now with hues of Hope ; 

Now sobered gray by Disappointment strange ; 



31G AN A'UTIIOR'S MIND. 

With Love's own roses blushing, warm and bright; 

Black with Hate's heat, or white with Envy's cold ; 
Made glorious by Religion's purple light ; 

Or sicklied o'er with yellow lust of Gold ; 
So, good or evil coming, peace or strife, 

Zeal when in youth, and Avarice when old, 
In changeful, chanceful phases passeth life. 

It is well I was not stopped before my lawful fourteenth rhyme by yon- 
der prosaic gentleman, humbly listening in front, who asks, with some- 
what of malicious triumph, whereto does all this lead? — Categorically, 
sir, [there is no argument in the world equal to a word of six syllables] 
categorically, sir, to this : of all life's turns and twists, few things pro- 
duce more change to the daring debutant than successful authorship; it 
is as if, applying our simile, a fragment of printed bookishness among 
those kaleidoscopic morsels, having worked its way into the field of 
vision, had there got stereotyped by a photogenic process: in fact, it 
fixes on it a predestinated "author's mind." 

An author's mind! what a subject for the lights and shadows of meta- 
physical portraiture! what a panorama of images! what a whirling- 
scene of ever-changing incidents! what a store-house for thoughts! 
what a land of marvels! what untrodden heights, what unexplored 
depths of an ever-undiscovered country ! That strange world hath a 
structure and a furniture all its own ; its chalcedonic rocks are painted 
with rare creatures floating in their liquid-seeming hardness ; forms of 
other spheres lie buried in its lias cliffs ; seeds of unknown plants, relics 
of unlimned reptiles, fragments of an old creation, the ruins of a fanci- 
ful cosmogony, lie hid until the day of their requiral beneath its fertile 
soil : and then its lawless botany ; flowers of glorious hue hung upon 
the trees of its forests ; luscious fruits flung liberally among the mosses 
of its banks; air-plants sailing in its atmosphere; unanchored water- 
lilies dancing in its bright cascades ; and this, too, a world, an inner 
secret world, peopled with unthought images, specimens of a peculiar 
creation ; outlandish forms are started from its thickets, the dragon and 
the cherub are numbered with its winged inhabitants, and herds of 
uncouth shape pasture on its meadows. Wlio can sound its seas, deep 
calling unto deep ? who can stand upon the hill-tops, height beckoning 
unto height? who can track its labyrinths? who can map its caverns? 
A. limitless essence, an unfailing spring, an evergreen fruit-tree, a riddle 
unsolved, a quaint museum, a hot-bed of inventions, an over-mantling 



A RAMBLE. 347 

tankard, a whimsical motley, a bursting volcano, a full, independent, 
generous — a poor, fettered, jealous, Anomaly, such — bear witness — is an 
author's mind. O, theme of many topics! chaos of ill-sorted fancies! 
Let us come now to the jealousies, the real or imaginary wrongs of 
authorship: hereafter treat we this at lengthier; "for the time present" 
— I quote the facetious Lord Coke, when writing on that highly exhiler- 
ating topic, the common-law — "hereof let this little taste suffice." Is 
it not a wrong to be taken for a mere book-merchant, a mercenary 
purveyor of learning and invention, of religion and philosophy, of 
instruction, or even of amusements, for the sole consideration of value 
received, as one would use a stalking-horse for getting near a stag ? this, 
too, when ten to one some cormorant on the tree of knowledge, some 
staid-looking publisher in decent mourning, is complacently pocketing the 
profits, and modestly charging you with loss? and this, moreover and 
more poignantly, when the flame of responsibility on some high subject 
is blazing at your heart, and the young Elihu, even if he would, cannot 
keep silence ? Is it not a wrong to find pearls unpi'ized, because many 
a modern, like his Celtic progenitors, (for I must not say like swine,) 
would sooner crush an acorn? to know your estimation among men ebbs 
and flows according to the accident of success, rather than the quality 
of merit ? to be despised as an animal who must necessarily be living on 
his wits in some purlieu, answering to that antiquated reproach, a Grub- 
street attic ; or suspected among gentler company in this most mercantile 
age for a pickpocket, a pauper, a chevalier d'induslrie? And then those 
hounds upon tlie bleeding flanks of many a hunted author, those open- 
mouthed inexorable critics, (I allude to the Pariah class, not to the higher 
caste brethren,) how suddenly they rend one, and fear not ! Only for 
others do I speak, and in no degree on account of having felt their fangs, 
as many have done, my betters ; gentle and kind, as domesticated span- 
iels, have reviewers in general been to your humble confessor, and for 
such courtesies is he their debtor. But who can be ignorant how fre- 
quently some hapless writer is impaled alive on the stake of ridicule, 
that a flagging magazine may be served up with sauce piqiiante, and 
pander to the world for its waning popularity by the malice of a pun- 
gent article ? who, while as a rule he may honour the bench of critics 
for patience, talent, and impartiality, is not conusant of those exceptions, 
not seldom of occurence, where obvious rancour has caused the unkindly 
condemnation; where personal inveteracy aims from behind the Ajax 
shield of anonymous reviewing, and shoots, like a cowardly Teucer, the 



348 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

foe fair-exposed whom he dares not fight with? — But, as will be seen 
hereafter, I trespass on a title-page, and here will add no more than 
this : Is it not a wrong of double edge, that while the world makes no 
excuse for the writhing writer, on the reasonable ground that after all hn 
may be innocent of what his critics blame him for, the same good- 
natured world, on almost every occasion of magazine applause, believes 
either that the author has written for himself the favourable notice, or 
that pecuniary bribes have made the honest editor his tool ? Verily, my 
public, thou art not generous here ; ay, and thou art grievously deceived, 
as well as sordid : for by careless praise, causeless censure, credit given 
for corrupt bribery, and no allowance made for unamiable criticisms, 
poor maltreated authors speak to many wrongs : and of them more anon. 

What moreover shall we say of chilling friendships, near estrange- 
ments, heartless lovers loitering behind, shy acquaintance dropping off? 
Verily, there is a mighty sifting : you have dai'ed to stand alone, have 
expounded your mind in imperishable print, have manifested wit enough 
to outface folly, sufficient moral courage to condemn vice, and more than 
is needful of good wisdom to shame the oracles of worldliness : and so 
some dread you, some hate, and many shun : the little selfish asterisks 
in that small sky fly from your constellatory glories : you are inde- 
pendent, a satellite of none : you have dared to think, write, print, in all 
ways contrary to many; and if wise men and good be loud in their 
applause, you arrive at the dignity of manifold hatreds; but if those and 
their inferiors condemn, you sink into the bathos of multiplied contempts. 
Of other wrongs somewhen and where, hereafter ; meanwhile, a better 
prospect glows on the kaleidoscopic field — a flattering accession of new 
and ardent friends: "Sir," said an old priest to a young author, "you 
have made a soft pillow for your head when it comes to be as white as 
mine is;" a pretty saying of sweet charity, and such sink deep: as for 
the younger and the warmer, being mostly of the softer sex, some will 
profess admiring sensations that border not a little on idolatries; others, 
gayer, will appear in the dress of careless, unskillful admiration; not a 
few, both men and women, go indeed weakly along with the current 
stream of popularity, but, to say truth, look happiest when they find some 
stinging notice that may mortify the new bold candidate for glory ; while, 
last and best, a fewer, a very much fewer, do handsomely the liberal 
part of friends, commending where they can, objecting where they must, 
sincere in sorrow for a fault, rejoicing without envy for a virtue. 

Many like phenomena has authorship : a certain class of otherwise 



A RAMBLE. 



349 



humanized and well-intentioned people begin to regard your scribe as a 
monster — not a so-called "lion" to be sought, but some strange creature 
to be dreaded : Perdition ! what if he should be coffitatincr a novel or a 
play, and means to make free with our characters? what if that libel- 
lous copartnership of Saunders and Ottley is permitted to display our 
faults and foibles, flimsily disguised, before a mocking world? Disap- 
pointed maidens that hover on the verge of forty, and can sympathize 
with Jephtha's daughter in her lonely mournings, causelessly begin to fear 
that a mischievous author may appropriate their portraits; venerable 
bachelors, who have striven to eara some little local notoriety by the dil- 
igent use of an odd phrase, a quaint garment, or an eccentric fling 
in the peripatetic, dread a satirist's powers of retributive burlesque; 
table orators suddenly grow dumb, for they suspect such a caitiff intends 
cold-blooded plagiarisms from their eloquence ; the twinkling stars of 
humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose very 
trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before 
some prying lantern ; and all who have in one way or another prided 
themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance 
as the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of wit- 
lings in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so looked- for- 
ward-to by guests ! In most cases, how forlorn they be ! liow dull, 
constrained, suspicious! like rival traders, with pockets instinctively 
buttoned up, and glaring each upon the other with most uncommunica- 
tive aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and wrestlers, 
watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to drag in some 
laboured witticism of their own, after the classical precedent of Her- 
cules and Cerberus : those feasts of reason, how vapid ! those flows of 
soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim and dismal! 
Once more ; and, remember me, I speak in a personated character of 
the general, and not experimentally ; so, flinging self aside, let me speak 
what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown a man with bays, 
and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of rejoicing ; is the victor 
there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as Nemean heroes should 
be ? or does he not rather droop instantly again into the obscure unit 
among a level mass, only the less welcome for having stood up, a Saul 
or a Musseus, with his head above his fellows? Verily, no man is a 
proph — Enough, enough ! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious calling, 
and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah ; enough, 
enough ! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of fervent, 

30 



350 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the eyes — there, 
well born in beauty — there perpetually (so your fondness hopes) to live 
— slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest daughter ; the 
Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching head, and 
stands in her immortal independence ; an Eve, his own heart's fruit, wel- 
comes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work, 
bodily ; your communion has commenced with those of times to come ; 
your mind has produced a witness to its individuality ; there is a tablci 
sacred to its memory standing among men for ever. 

A thinker is seldom great in. conversation, and the glib talkers who 
have silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder 
in his deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos — (let 
Caliban be swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often 
unexplained, because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and 
lightly for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportu- 
nities in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs ; such 
heart-emptyings yield heart-ease : an author, who has done his good work 
well — for such a one alone we speak — while, privately, he scarce could 
have i-efreshed mankind by petty driblets — in the perpetuity, publicity, 
and universal acceptation of his high and honourable calling, does good 
by wholesale, irrigates countries, and gladdens largely the large heart 
of human society. And are not these unbounded pleasures, spreading 
over life, and comforting the struggles of a death-bed ? Yes : rising as 
Ezekiel's river from ankle to knee, from knee to girdle, from girdle to 
the overflowing flood — far beyond those lowest joys, which many wise 
have trampled under foot, of praise, and triumph, and profit — the author- 
ship of good, that has made men better; that has consoled sorrow, 
advanced knowledge, humbled arrogance, and blest humanity; that has 
sent the guilty to his prayers, and has gladdened the Christian in his 
praises — the authorship of good, that has shown God in his loveliness, 
and man in his dependence ; that has aided the cause of charity, and 
shamed the face of sin — this high beneficence, this boundless good-doing, 
hath indeed a rich recompense, a glorious reward ! 

But we must speed on, and sear these hydra-necks, or we shall have 
as many heads to our discourse, and as puzzling, as any treatise of the 
Puritan divinity. Let us hasten to be practical ; let us not so long for- 
get the promised title-pages; let it at length satisfy to show, more than 
theoretically, how authorship stirs up the mind to daily-teeming projects,, 
and then casts out its half-made progeny ; how scraps of paper come to 



A RAMBLE. 35I 

be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts, thenceforward 
doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves; how stores of 
mingled information gravitate into something of order, each seed herding 
with its fellows ; and how every atom of mixed metal, educationally held 
in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen precipitating test, gre- 
gariously building up in time its own true crystal. 

Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as hereto- 
fore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall follow a 
full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now in the 
book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last times, 
that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be pleased 
herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one mind 
should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a perform- 
ance so various, inconsistent, and unusual ; premising, also, that wherein 
I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is unwittingly and 
unwillingly ; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a man must read 
harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising this much 
farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger, neither using 
up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so ; and that, whether 
I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify and perfect any of 
these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and booksellers, steal 
not; for so surely as I catch any one thus behaving — and truly, my 
masters, the temptation is but small — I will stick a " Sic vos, non vobis," 
on his brazen forehead. 

Wait ! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant 
of my mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying 
utterances before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; 
I would pray a catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, 
and the undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your 
pardons universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, 
strangely and Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caerphilli, out of the 
perpendicular of truth ; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, 
for good or for evil ; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhal- 
lowed special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; 
I am ijuilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on 
the powerful gusts of feeling that burst upon my irritable breast; my 
heart is no smooth Dead Sea, but the still vexed Bermoothes : therefore 
I would print my penitence ; I would publish my confessions ; I would 
not hide my humbleness; and it pleases me to pour out in sonnet-form 
my unconventipnal 



352 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 



APOLOGY TO ALL. 

— For I have sinn'd ; oh ! grievously and often ; 

Exaggerated ill, and good denied ; 
Blacken'd the shadows only born to soften ; 

And Truth's own light unkindly misapphed: 
Alas! for charities unloved, uncherish'd. 

When some stern judgment, haply erring wide, 
Hath sent my fancy forth, to dream and tell 

Other men's deeds all evil ! Oh, my heart! 
Renew once more thy generous youth, half perish'd ; 

Be wiser, kindlier, better than thou art ! 
And first, in fitting meekness, offer well 

All earnest, candid prayers, to be forgiven 
For worldly, harsh, unjust, unlovable 

Thoughts and suspicions against man and Heaven ! 

Friends all, let this be my best amendment : bear with the candour, 
homely though it may be, of your author's mind; and suffer its further 
revelations of unborn manuscript with charitable listening; for they 
would come forth in real order of time, the first having priority, and not 
the best, ungarnished, unweeded, uncared-for, humbly, and without any 
further flourish of trumpets. 



Serjeant Ion — I beg his pardon, Talfourd — somewhere gives it as Iiir. 
opinion, that most people, in any way troubled with a mind, have at some 
time or other meditated a tragedy. Truly, too, it is a fine vehicle for 
poetical solemnities, a stout-built vessel for an author's graver thoughts ; 
and the bare possibility of seeing one's own heart-stirring creation vis- 
ually set before a crowded theatre, the preclusive echoes of anticipated 
thundering applause, the expected thrilling silence attendant on a pet 
scene or sentiment, all the tangible accessories of painting and music, 
clever acting and effective situation, and beyond and beside these the 
certain glories of the property-wardrobe, make most young minds press 
forward to the little-likely prize of successful tragedy. That at one 
weak period I was bitten, my honesty would scorn to deny ; but for- 
tunately for my peace of mind, "Melpomene looked upon me with an 
aspect of little favour," and sturdy truth-telling Tacitus made me at last 
l)i!t li;:jht]y regardful of my subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was visited 



NERO, A TRAGEDY. 353 

with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes ; it has been my fatality 
more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon other 
people's topics — for who can find any thing new under the sun?— and I 
had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of speeches, 
stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of which I will 
mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson ^ Lives of the 
Poets ' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of some long-for- 
gotten bard ! This moral earthquake demolished in a moment my 
goodly aerial fabric; the fair plot burst like a meteor; and an after- 
recollection of a certain French tragedy-queen, Agrippina, showed me 
that the ground was still further preoccupied. But it is high time to tell 
the destined name of my abortive play ; in four letters, then, 

NERO; 

A CLASSICAL TRAGEDY: 

IN SEVEN SCENES. 

And now, in pity to an afflicted parent, hear for a while his offspring's 
Roscian capabilities. First of all, however, (and you know how I 
rejoice in all things preliminary,) let me clear my road by explanations: 
we must pioneer away a titular objection, "in seven scenes," and an 
assumed merit, in the term " classical." I abhor scene-shifters ; at least, 
their province lies more among pantomimes, farces, and comedies, than 
in the region of the solemn tragic muse ; her incidents should rather 
partake of the sculpture-like dignity of tableaux. My unfashionable 
taste approves not of a serious story being cut up into a vast number of 
separate and shuffled sections ; and the whistle and sliding panels detract 
still more from the completeness of illusion : I incline as much as is 
possible to the classic unities of time, place, and circumstances, wishing, 
moreover, every act to be a scene, and every scene an act; with a com- 
fortable green curtain, that cool resting-place for the haggard eye, to be 
the grass-like drop, mildly alternating with splendid crime and misera- 
ble innocence: away with those gaudy intermediates, and, still worse, 
some intruded ballet ; bring back Garrick's baize, and crush the dynasty 
of head-aches. 

But onward: let me further extenuate the term, seven scenes; the 
utterance seven "acts" would sound horrific, full of extremities of 
weariness ; but my meaning actually is none other than seven acts of 
X 30* 



354 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

one scene each : for the number seven, there always have been decent 
reasons, and ours may best appear as we proceed, less than a brief seven 
seeming insufficient, and more, superfluous ; again, so mystical a number 
has a staid propriety, and a due double climax of risQ and fall. Now, 
as to our adjective " classical :" Why not, in heroic drama, have some- 
thin cr a-kin to the old Greek chorus, with its running comment upon 
motives and moralities, somewhat as the mighty-master has set forth in 
his truly patriotic ' Henry the Fifth .?' — However, taking other grounds, 
the epithet is justified, both by the subject and the proposed unmodern 
method of its treatment : but of all this enough, for, on second thoughts, 
perhaps we may do without the chorus. 

It is obvious that no historical play can strictly preserve the true unity 
of time ; cause and effect move slower in the actual machinery of life, 
than the space of some three hours can allow for : we must unavoid- 
ably clump them closer; and so long as a circumstance might as weil 
have happened at one time as at another, I consider that the poet is justi- 
fied in crowding prior events as near as he may please towards the goal 
of their catastrophe. If then any slight inaccuracy as to dates arrests 
your critical ken, believe that it is not ignorantly careless, but learnedly 
needful. One other objection, and I have done. No man is an utu r 
inexcusable, irremediable villain; there is a spot of light, however hid- 
den, somewhere; and, notwithstanding the historian's picture, it may 
charitably be doubted whether we have made due allowance for his most 
reasonable prejudice even in Nero's case. Human nature has produced 
many monsters; but, amongst a thousand crimes, there has proverbially 
lingered in each some one seedling of a virtue; and when we consider 
the corruption of manners in old Rome, the idolatrous flatteries hemming 
in the prince, the universal lie that hid all things from his better percep- 
tions, we can fancy some slight extenuation for his mad career. Not 
that it ever was my aim, in modern fashion, to excuse villany, or to gild 
the brass brow of vice ; and verily, I have not spared my odious hero ; 
nevertheless, in selecting so unamiable a subject, (or rather emperor ) I 
wished not to conceal that even in the worst of men there is a soil for 
hope and charity ; and that if despotism has high prerogatives, its wealth 
and state are desperate temptations, whose dangers mightily predominate, 
and whose necessary influences, if quite unbiased, tend to utter mi.s.M'v. 

Now to introduce our dramatis personce, with their 'cast." — for Later 
effect — rather unreasonably presumed. Nero — (Macready, who would 
impersonate him grandly, and who, moreover, whether complimented or 



NERO, A TRAGEDY. 



355 



not by the likeness, wears a head the very counterpart of Nero's, as 
every Numismatist will vouch,) — a naturally noble spirit, warped by 
sensuality and pride into a very tyrant ; liberal in gifts, yet selfish in 
passion ; not incapable of a higher sort of love, yet liable to sudden 
changes, and at times tempestuously cruel. Nattalis — (say Vanden- 
hofF,) — his favourite and evil genius, originally a Persian slave, and still 
wearing the Eastern costume : a sort of lago, spiriting up the willing 
Nero to all varieties of wickedness, getting him deified, and otherwise 
mystifying the poor besotted prince with all kinds of pleasure and glory, 
tO subserve certain selfish ends of rapine, power, and licentiousness, and 
lo avenge, perhaps, the misfortunes of his own country on the chief of 
her destroyers. Marcus MajiUus— {who better than Charles Kean?— 
supposing these artistic combinations not to be quite impossible,) — a fine 
young soldier, of course loving the heroine, captain of Nero's body- 
guard, chivalrous, honourable, noble, and faithful to his bad master 
amid conflicting trials. Ptiblius Bentatus — (any hould speaker ; besides, 
it would be rather too much to engage all the actors yet awhile ;) — a 
worthy old Roman, father of the heroine. Galba, the chief mover in 
the catastrophe, as also the opener of its causes, an intriguing and fierce, 
but well-intentioned patriot, who ultimately becomes the next emperor. 
With Curtius a tribune, senators, conspirators, soldiers, priests, flamens, 
&c. And so, after the ungallant fashion of theatrical play-wrights, as 
to a class inferior to the very &c. of masculines — (of less intention 
withal than one of those &cs. of crabbed Littleton, like an old shoe fri- 
casseed into savourings of all things by its inimitable Coke,) — come we 
to the women-kind. Agrippina, (one of the school of Siddons,) empress- 
mother, a strong-minded, Lady-Macbeth sort of woman, and the only 
person in the world who can awe her amiable son. Lucia, {you cannot 
be spared here, clever Helen Faucit) — the heroine, secretly a Christian 
affianced to Manlius ; a character of martyr's daring and woman's love. 
Rufa, a haggard old sibyl, with both private and public reasons for 
detesting Nero and Nattalis : and all the fitting female attendants to con- 
elude the list. 

Each scene, in which each act will be included, should be pictorially, 
so to speak, a tableau in the commencement, and a tableau of situation 
in the end. Let us draw up upon scene the first. Back-ground, Rome 
burning ; in front, ruins of fine Tuscan villa, still smoking ; and a ter- 
minal altar in the garden. Plebs. running to and fro, full of conventional 
little speeches, with goods, parents, penates, and other lumber, rescued 



35G AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

from the flames ; till a tribune, (hight Curtius,) in a somewhat incendiary- 
oration concerning poor men's calamities, and against the powers tliat be, 
sends them to the capitol with a procession of flamines Diales and ves- 
tals, dirging solemnly a Roman hymn [some "^rf CapitoUum, Ad Jovis 
solium,'^ and so forth] to good music. At the end of the train come in 
Publius and Lucia, to whom from opposite hurriedly walks Galba, full 
of talk of omens, direful doings, patriotism, and old Rome's ruin. To 
these let there be added — to speak mathematically — open-hearted Man- 
lius; and let there follow certain disceptatious converse about Nero, 
Manlius excusing him, extenuating his vices by his temptations, giving 
military anecdotes of his earlier virtues, and in fact striving to make the 
most of him, a very gentle monster: Galba throwing in, sarcastically, 
blacker shadows. After disputation, the father and lovers walk off, 
leaving Galba alone for a moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the 
terminal altar, unseen Sibyl hails him Caesar; he, astonished at the airy 
voice so coincident with his own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his bab- 
bling thoughts, and so forth : then enter to him suddenly chance-met 
noble citizens, burnt out of house and home, who declaim furiously 
against Nero. Sibyl, still unseen from behind the altar, again hails 
Galba as future Cfesar ; who, no longer doubting his ears, and all present 
taking the omen, they conspire at the altar with drawn swords, and as 
the Sibyl suddenly presides — tableau — and down drops the soft green 
baize. This first act, you perceive, is stirring, introductory of many 
characters; and the picture of the seven-hilled-city, seen in a transpa- 
rent blaze, might give the followers of Slanfield a triumph. 

Second : The senate scene, producing another monstrous crime of 
Nero's, also inaccurately dated. In the full august assembly, Nero 
discovered enthroned, not unmajestic in deportment, yet effeminately 
chapleted, and holding a lyre: suppose him just returned from Elis, a 
pancratist, the world's acknowledged champion. Nattalis, ever foremost 
in flatteries, after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, 
like Paris in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero had gloriously 
fired Rome ; he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble ; (so, the 
catafalque at the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, 
as well as blessing, he had asserted his divinity; and after due allusions 
to PhcEuixes, and fire-kingships, and coups-de-soliel falling from the 
same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that Nero shouil 
be worsliipped, and calls on the priest of Juj>iter to set a good example. 
None dare refuse, and the senate bend before Iiiin : whereupon enter, ir. 



NERO, A TRAGEDY. 



557 



clerical procession, augurs, and diviners, men at arms with pole-axes, 
and coronaled white bulls, paraded before sacrifice : all tliis panderin^^ 
to present love of splendour and picturesque effect. In the midst of 
these classical preparations, enters, with a bevy of attendants, the haughty 
queen-like Agrippina, whom Nero, having sent for to complete his tri- 
umph, commands to bend too ; but she stoutly refusing, and taking him 
fiercely to task, objurgating likewise Rome's degenerate gray-beards — 
great bustle — senate broken up hurriedly — and she, with a "/eri ven- 
irem," dragged off to be killed by her son's order. Nero alone with 
Nattalis by imperial command ; his momentary compunction nullified 
by the wily lago, who turns off the subject smoothly to a new object of 
desire : Publius was the only senator not in his place, and Publius has a 
daughter, the fairest in Rome, Lucia — had not the emperor noticed her 
among Agrippina's women ? Nero, charmed with any scheme of novelty 
that may change remorseful thoughts, ig induced, nothing loth, to attempt 
the subtle abduction of the heroine; a body-guard, headed as always 
by Manlius, ready in the vestibule to escort him, and exit. Nattalis, 
alone for a minute, betrays his own selfish schemes concerning Lucia, 
who had refused him before, and alludes to his secret reasons for urging 
on the maddened Nero to the worst excesses. 

Third scene (or part, or act, if it must be so), expounds, in fitting con- 
trast to the foregoing, the tender loves of Lucia and Manlius; a gentle 
home-scene, a villa and its terraced gardens : also, as Lucia is a Christian, 
we have, poetically, and not puritanically, an insight into her scruples 
of conscience as to the heathenism of her lover : and also into his con- 
sistent nobility of character, not willing to surrender the religion of his 
fathers unconvinced. To them rushes in Publius, who has been warned 
by friend Galba of the near approach of Nattalis and a guard, to seize 
Lucia for disreputable Nero : no possible escape, and all urge Lucia to 
imitate Virginia, Lucretia, and others of like Dian fame, by cowardly 
self-murder ; she is high-principled, and won't : then they — the father and 
lover — request leave to kill her; conflicting passions and considerable 
stage effect ; Lucia, who with calm courage derides the dastard sacri- 
fice, standing unharmed between those loving thirsty swords : in a grand 
speech, she makes her quiet departure a test of Manlius' love, and her 
ultimate deliverance to be a proof to him that her God is the true God, 
the God who guards the innocent. Manlius, struck with her martyr-like 
constancy, professes that if indeed she is saved out of tiiis great trouble, 
he will embrace her faith, renounce his own, and so break down the 



358 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

only difference between them : just after which, Nattalis and guard burst 
in; then ensue much scornful parley, and a storm of quarrel, which 
Lucia allays, and she walks off confident in virtue. Publius and Man- 
lius left alone in despair, until — bright thought — the latter considers that, 
as Nero's body-captain, he can always hover round the safety of his 
beloved ; and though his soldier's oaths, and notions of sacred sever- 
eignty, forbid him to slay Nero, yet he comforts himself with the thought 
that in the last resort of unavoidable dishonour, he can rush in, and kill 
his own Lucia. . 

The fourth scene is a climacter, as old Browne would say — the 
heroine's extremity : Nero's golden house, the roof rolling like the 
spheres to soft music, and a gorgeous marble avenue, ending with the 
colossal statue of the emperor, of gold, with incense burning before it: 
a scene, true to history, that might pale Aladdin's lamp, and dazzle the 
eyes of the groundlings : consider well then this my possible tragedy, 
ye that cater for theatric banquets. Lucia discovered alone, solilo- 
quizing: suddenly enters, unattended, the buskined Nero; [who was 
believed to have been then out hunting with Nattalis on a new white 
steed, which the favourite had, to serve his purpose, given him, but had 
stolen secretly from the chase, as he wisely tells Lucia, to track up 
fairer game.] A p,rand scena between them, to be managed with as 
much delicacy as possible, of fawning entreaty, indignant refusal, impe- 
rious command, and dignified rebuke; ending in Nero forcibly seizing 
her, and Lucia's involuntary ejaculation "that the God of the Christians 
might protect her !" at this word, Nero's love is turned into burning hate ; 
he falls into one of Macready's magnificent passions, and, howling for 
his body-guard, he commits Lucia, as an odious victim for the stake, 
unconscious of their acquaintance, into the hands of Manlius! — Nero, 
considerably disgusted, retires alone to a tapestried couch at the side : — 
and now (all due care being taken to prevent the incident being farcical,) 
in creeps Nattalis, also secretly from the chase, merry at having outwit- 
ted Nero on that runaway white hunter; of course, he proceeds to make 
sure of his presumably sleeping prize, the fair Lucia ; so, much praising 
his lucky stars, he draws the envious tapestry, and — only conceive the 
huse fracas between Nero and Nattalis, the strueiirle of two such demons! 
Tliey cross swords, and while fighting furiously, in rushes a guard ; and, 
Nero being wounded, Nattalis escapes in the scufile, and, like all other 
disappointed friends, assumes tlie metamorphosis of his deadliest enemy. 

Fifth scene : the Sibyl's cave, a fine bit of witchcraft-rites, and moon- 



NERO, A TRAGEDY. 359 

light, in the neighbourhood of lake Avernus. Galba and conspirators 
are met together by appointment ; reasonable complaints against Nero's 
crimes, crowned by the murder of his mother, the burning of Rome, 
and (after having openly avowed it, and sung the fall of Ilium to its 
crackling accompaniment,) his excessive lying meanness in now accusing 
those poor fools, the Nazarenes. Incantations meanwhile brewing, with 
witch in the rear. Enters dishevelled Nattalis, with bloody sword, at 
first to their infinite consternation, soon changed to joy. He is sworn 
among them, although they distrust him, and secretly resolve that he 
and Nero shall die together, as master and man should: moreover, the 
Sibyl, who lets out her private reasons for this by accusing, in a strain 
of retributive justice, Nattalis of having ruined heretofore her own two 
daughters, and driven her — her, a high-born Roman matron — to be the 
thing she now is for vengeance-sake, oracularly denounces him to die 
simultaneously with Nero. The rascal shows his cowardly nature by 
humiliating prayers, and miserably repents his double treachery ; but 
those Tartars will not let him go, the conspirators keep him in their well- 
armed company ; so he wretchedly foresees his fate, and resolves, as 
some last act of what he considers virtue, to die, since he must, in rid- 
ding the world of that monster, the emperor. 

The sixth is a palace scene, with a throne behind : Nero discovered 
alone, a victim to horrible remorse, and half resolved to turn penitent; 
the voice of his mother's ghost heard at intervals, as torturing his con- 
science, and speaking close to him, palpably, though unseen. The mur- 
der of his kind old tutor Seneca, also afflicting him, to say nothing of poor 
Poppcea. His fears of solitude, and equal dread of company, incident- 
ally revealing that under his imperial vest he wears secret armour; for, 
now that Nattalis has failed him, whom can he trust? some traits of 
human kindness, even to tears, in his recollections of Nattalis. A 
courtier, after this, announces that Publius demands audience of the 
emperor : the court come in, Nero assumes state, mounts the throne, and 
enter Publius. A most heart-rending intercession of the father for his 
daughter's life, which Nero's iron heart, chagrined at his discomfiture, 
derides: this failing, Publius changes his tone, and, with many hints of 
what he, an old man, has gained in wisdom by his years, and especially 
(perhaps) of what he has heard from one Saul or Paul, a captive, pro- 
fesses he can tell Nero of a new pleasure, a secret he withholds if denied 
his daughter's life ; the graphic description of happiness to be gained 
thereby, rouses Nero's selfish curiosity ; threats, cajolery, and promises 



300 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

of wealth and rank, are alike thrown away upon Publius; at last, the 
prince promises; and when Publius, after a burst of earnest eloquence, 
proclaims the new pleasure to consist in showing mercy, Nero's utier 
wrath, his hurricane of hate, revoking that hasty promise, and hurrying 
away old Publius to die at the same stake with his daughter. 

Seventh : the catastrophe scene lies in the Coliseum amphitheatre ; 
(I mean the older one, anterior to Vespasian's:) bloody games pictured 
behind, and those "human torches " at fiery intervals. Nero, enthroned 
in side front, surrounded by a brilliant court, amongst whom are some 
of the conspirators: at other side Publius and Lucia, tied at one stake in 
white robes, back to back, to die before Nero's eyes, Manlius and 
soldiers guarding them : he, Manlius, having nobly resolved to test 
miraculous assistance to the last, but now tremblingly believing the 
chance of a Providence interfering, since Lucia's escape from Nero at 
the golden house. Just as the emperor, after a sarcastic speech, char- 
acteristically interlarded with courtier conversation, is commanding the 
fowot to be lighted, and Lucia's constant faith has bade Manlius do it — 
a rush of Nattalis with attendant conspirators and Rufa the Sibyl, up to 
Nero ; Nattalis strikes him, but the sword breaks short off on the hidden 
armour; Nero's majestic rising for a moment, asserting himself Ceesar 
still, the inviolable majesty; — suddenly stopped by a centripetal rush 
of the conspirators; who kill him, (after he has vainly attempted in 
despair to kill himself,) and Galba sits on the throne, while Nero, 
unpitied and unhelped, gasps out in the middle his dying speech. 
Meanwhile, at the other side, Manlius has killed Nattalis for his 
treachery, cut the bonds of Publius and Lucia, and all ends in moral 
justice for the triumph of good, and the defeat of evil ; Manlius and 
Lucia, hand in hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands bless- 
ing them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies perse- 
cuted by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Caesar by the 
assembled Romans. So, upon a magnificent tableau, slowly falls the 
lawny curtain. 

Patient reader, what think you of my long-winded tragedy? No 
quibbling about Nero having really died in a drain, four years after the 
murder of Aggrippina; no learned disquisitions, if you please, as to his 
innocence of Rome's fire, a counterpart to our slander on the Papacy in 
the matter of London's ; spare me, I pray you, learned pundit, your suspi- 
cions about Galba's too probable alibi in Spain. Tell me rather this: 
do I falsify history in any thing more important than mere accidental 



OPIUM, A HISTORY. 361 

anachronisms and anatopisms ? do I make an untrue delineation of char- 
acter, blackening the good, or white-washing the wicked? Do I not, by 
introducing Nero's three greatest crimes so near upon his assassination, 
merely accelerate the interval between causes and effect? And is not 
tragic dignity justified in varnishing, with other compost than the dregs of 
Rome, the exit of the last true Coesar of the Augustan family? For all 
the rest, good manager, provide me actors, and I am even now uncertain 
— such is my weakness — whether this skeleton might not at some time be 
clad with flesh and skin, and a decent Roman toga. I fear it will yet 
haunt me as a ^Midsummer Night's Dream,' destroying my quiet with 
involuntary shreds and patches of long-metred blank ; the notion is still 
vivacious, albeit scotched : Alexandrine though the synopsis appear, it 
must not be thrown on the highroad as a dead snake ; nay, let me cherish 
it yet on my hearth, and not hurl it away like a honum waviaium; a 
little more boiling up of Roman messes in my brain, and my tragedy 
might flow forth spontaneously as lava. What if this book be, after all, 
a sort of pilot-balloon, to show my huge Nassau the way the wind blows 
— a feeler as to which and which may please? Whether or not this be 
so, I will still confess on, emptying my brain of booklets, and, if by 
happy possibility I can keep my secret, shall hear unsuspected, friend, 
your verdict. 



I MUST rather hope, than expect, that my next bit of possible author- 
ship is not like the last, a subject forestalled. Scribbling as I find 
myself for veiy listlessness in a dull country-house, there's not a pub- 
lisher's index within thirty miles; so, for lack of evidence to the con- 
trary, I may legitimately, for at least a brief period of self-delusion, 
imagine the intoxicating field my own. And yet so fertile, important, 
interesting a subject, cannot have been quite overlooked by the corps of 
professed literary labourers : the very title-page would insure five thou- 
sand readers (especially with a Brunswicker death's-head and marrow- 
bones added underneath). 

OPIUM; 

A HISTORY; 

standing alone in single blackiness: Opium, a magnificent theme, war- 
ranted to fill a huge octavo: and certain, from sheer variety of informa- 
tion, to lead into the captivity of admiring criticism minds of every 

31 



362 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

calibre. Its natural history, with due details of all manner of poppies, 
their indigenous habitats, botanical characters, ratios of increase, and 
the like ; its human history, discovery as a drug ; how, when, where, 
and by whom cultivated ; dissertations as to the, possibility of Chaldean, 
Pharaonic, Grecian, or Roman opium eating, with most erudite extracts 
out of all sorts of scribes, from Sanchoniathon down to Juvenal, on 
these topics ; its medicinal uses, properties, accidents, and abuses ; as to 
vvliether it might not be used homoeopathically or in infinitesimal doses, 
to infuse a love of the pleasures of imagination into clodpoles, lawyers' 
clerks, and country cousins; its intellectual possibilities of usefulness, 
stimulating the brain ; its moral ditto, allaying irritability ; together with 
a dreadful detail of its evils in excess, idiotizing, immoralizing, ruining 
soul and body. Plenty of stout unquestionable statistics, from all cran- 
nies of the globe, to corroborate all the above to the extreme satisfaction 
of practical men, with causes and consequences of its insane local pop- 
ularity. All this, moreover, at present, with especial reference to 
China and the East; added to the moral bearings of the Opium-war, 
and our national responsibilities relative to that unlucky traffic. The 
metaphysical question stated and answered, whether or not prohibition 
of any thing does not lead to its desire ; showing the increasing appe- 
tency of those sottish Series for the forbidden vice, and illustrating 
Gay's fable of the foolish young code, who ne'er had been in that con- 
dition, but for his mother's prohibition: moreover, how is it, that so 
captivating a form of intoxication is so little rife among our drunken 
journeymen? queries, however, as to this; and whether or not the hum- 
bug of teetotalism (a modern speculation, got up by and for the benefit 
of grocers and sugar-planters on the one side, schismatics and conspiring 
demagogues on the other,) has already substituted opium-eating, drink- 
ing, or smoking, for the wholesomer toddies, among factory folk and 
the finest pisantry. Millions of anecdotes regarding Eastern Rajahs, 
Western Locofocos, Southern Moors, and North-country Muscovites, as 
to the drug in its abuses: strange cures (if any) of strange ailments of 
mind or body by its prudent use : how to wean men and nations from 
those deleterious chewings and smokings ; with true and particular 
accounts of such splendid self-conquests as Coleridge and De Quincey, 
and — shall 1 add another, a living name? — have attained to. Then, 
again, what a field for poetical vagaries, and madnesses of imagination, 
would be afforded by the subject of opium-dreams ! Now, strictly 
speaking, in order to hallucinate honestly, your opium-writer ought to 



OPIUM, A HISTORY. SQ3 

have had some practical knowledge of opium-eating: then could he 
descant with the authority of experience — yea, though he write himself 
thereby down an ass — on its effects upon mind and body; then could he 
tell of luxuries and torments in true Frenchified detail; then could lie 
expound its pains and pleasures with all the eloquence of personal con- 
viction. But, as to such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making 
I wot not how actual a mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I 
herein would reasonably demur : and, if I wanted dreams, would tax 
my fancy, and not my apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff 
opium, nor toss off laudanum negus, to imagine myself — a young Titan, 
sucking fiery milk from the paps of a volcano ; a despot so limitless and 
magnificent, as to spurn such a petty realm as the Solar System, with 
Cassiopeia, Bootes, and his dog, to boot ; an intellect, so ravished, that it 
feels all flame, or a mass of matter so inert, that it lies for ages in the 
silent depths of ocean, a lump of primeval metal : Madness, with the 
red-hot iron hissing in his brain : Murder, with the blood-hound ghost, 
over land, over sea, through crowds, deserts, woods, and happy fields, 
ever tracking silently in horrid calmness ; the oppression of indefinite 
Guilt, with that Holy Eye still watching ; the consciousness of instant 
danger, the sense of excruciating pain, the intolerable tyranny of vague 
wild fear, without will or power to escape : spurring for very life on a 
horse of marble: flying upward to meet the quick-falling skies — O, that 
universal crash! — greeted in a new-entered world with the execrations 
of the assembled dead — that hollow, far-echoing, malicious laughter 
— that hurricane-sound of clattering skulls ; to be pent up, stifling like 
a toad, in a limestone rock for centuries ; to be haunted, hunted, hooted ; 
to eat off one's own head with its cruel madly crunching under-jaw; to 
— but enough of horrors : and as to delights, all that Delcroix suggests 
of perfume, and Mahomet of Houris, and Gunter of cookery, and the 
German opera of music : all Camilla-like running unexertive, all that 
sea unicorns can effect in swift swimming, or storm-caught condors in 
things aerial ; all the rapid travellings of Puck from star to star, system 
to system, all things beauteous, exhilarating, ecstatic — ages of all these 
things, warranted to last. Now, multiply all these several alls by forty- 
nine, and the product will serve for as exaggerated a statement as possi- 
ble of opium pandering to pleasure ; yes, by forty-nine, by seven times 
seven at the least, that we be not accused of extenuating so fatal an 
excitement ; for it is competent to conceive one's self expanded into any 
unlimited number of bodies, seven sevens being the algebraic n, and if 



364 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

so, into their huge undefined aggregate ; a giant's pains are throes 
indeed, a giant's pleasures indeed flood over. But, we may do harm to 
morality and truth, by falsely making much of a faint, fleeting, paltry, 
excitation. The brain waltzing intoxicated, the heart panting as in 
youth's earliest affection, the mind broad, and deep, and calm, a Pacific 
in the sunshine, the body lapped in downy rest, with every nerve min- 
istering to its comfort; what more can one, merely and professedly of 
this world of sensualism — an opium-eater for instance — conceive of 
bliss? Such imaginative flights as these, with its pungent final inter- 
rogatory, suggestive to man's selfishness of joys as yet untried, might 
tempt to tamper with the dear delight ; whereas the plain statement of 
the most that opium could minister to happiness, as contrasted with those 
false vain views of it, remind me of Tennyson's poetical ' Thnbuctoo,' 
gorgeous as a new Jerusalem in Apocalyptic glories, and the mean filth- 
obstructed kraals dotted on an arid plain, to which, for very truthfulness, 
his soaring fancy drops plumbdown, as the shot eagle in ^ Der Freischutz.' 
Let this then serve as a meagre sketch of my defunct treatise on 
opium : think not that I love the subject, curious and fertile though it be ; 
perhaps, philosophically regarded, it is not a better one than gin; but 
ears polite endure not the plebeian monosyllable, unless indeed with a 
reduplicated n, as Mr. Lane will have it our whilom genie should be 
spelt: accordingly, I magnanimously give up the whole idea, and am 
liberal enough, in this my dying determination, to sign a codicil, 
bequeathing opium to my executors. 



NovELiSM is a field so filled with copy-holders, so populously tenanted 
in common, that it requires no light investigation to find a site unoccu- 
pied, and a hero or heroine waiting to be hired. Nevertheless, I seem 
to myself to have lighted on a rich and little-cultivated corner ; imagin- 
ing that the subject is a good one, because still untouched, founded on 
facts, and with amplifiable variations that border on the probable. He 
that lionizes Stratford-on-Avon, will remember in one of the Shaks- 
pearian museums of that classic town, the pictured trance of hapless 

CHARLOTTE CLOPTON, 

as it was limned in death-seeming life. He will be shown the tombs of 
her ancient family in Stratford church, and the door of that fatal vault ; 



CHARLOTTE CLOPTQN. 365 

he will hear something of hei* noble birth — her fine charactei* — her fas- 
cinating beauty — her short, innocent, eventful life — her horrible death. 
Consider, too, the age and locality in which she lived, Elizabethan, 
Shakspeare's ; the great contemporary characters tliat might be casually 
introduced; the mysterious suicide, in that dim dreadful pool at the end 
of the terraced walk among the cropped yews, of her poor only sister, 
Margaret ; equalled only in the miserable interest by that of Charlotte 
herself. And then for a plot: some darkly hinted parricide of years 
agone, in the generation but one preceding, has dropt its curse upon the 
now guiltless, but, by the law of Providence, still-not-acquitted family ; 
a parricide consequent on passionate love, differing religions, and the 
Montague-and-Capulet-school of hating feudal fathers — Theodore Clop- 
ton having been a Catholic, Alice Beauvoir a Protestant; an introduc- 
tory recountal of old Beauvoir's withering curse on the Clopton family 
for Theodore's abduction of his daughter, followed by the tragic event 
of the father and son, Cloptons', mutual hatred, and the former found in 
his own park with the broken point of his son's sword in him, the latter 
flying the realm : the curse has slept for a generation ; and now two fair 
daughters are all that I'emain to the high-bred Sir Clement and his 
desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir descendant, a bitterest enemy, 
takes care to remind them the hovering curse must burst. This Row- 
land Beauvoir is the villain of the story, whose sole aim it is, after the 
fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, to see the curse accomplished: 
and Charlotte's love for a certain young Saville, whom Beauvoir hates 
as his handsome rival in court patronage, as well as her pointed refusal 
of himself, gives new and present life to his ancestral grudge. The lovers 
are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's joy the greater, Saville has inter- 
est sufficient to meet the old knight's humour of keeping up the ancient 
family name, by getting it added to his own ; so that the Beauvoir hatred 
and parricidal curse seem likely to be frustrated. But — the first hin- 
drance to their union is poor sister Margaret's seci'et and infatuated love 
for that scheming villain Rowland, her then too probable seduction, mel- 
ancholic madness, and suicide : successively upon this follow the last ill- 
nesses and deaths of the heart-broken old people, whom Rowland's dreadful 
ubiquity terrifies in their very chamber of disease ; and as the too likely 
consequence of such accumulated sorrows on a creature of exquisite 
sensibility, Charlotte, the only remaining heiress of that ancient lineage, 
gradually, and with all the semblance of death, falls into her terrible 
trance. Rowland, who, through his intimacy with Margaret, knows all 

31* 



366 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

the secret passages and sliding panels of the old mansion, and who 
thereby gets mysterious admission whenever he pleases, comes into that 
silent chamber, and finds Saville mourning over his dead-seeming bride : 
she, all the while, though unable to move, in an agony of self-conscious- 
ness; and at last, when Rowland in fiendish triumph pronounces the 
curse complete, to the extreme horror of both, by an effort of tortured 
mind over apparently inanimate matter, rolls her glazed eyes, and gives 
an involuntary groan: having thus to all appearance confirmed the 
curse, she lies more marble-white, more corpse-like, more entranced 
than ever. Then, after long lingering, draws on the horrible catastrophe : 
a catastrophe, alas! as far at least as regards the heroine, quite true. 
Fully aware of all that is going on — the preparations for burial, the 
misery of her lover, the gratified malice of her foe — she is placed in 
the coffin: the rites proceed, her heart-stricken espoused takes his last 
long leave, she is carried to the grave, locked in the family vault under 
Stratford church, and there left alone, fearfully buried alive! And 
then, after a day or two, how shrieks and groans are heard in the 
church-yard by truant school-boys, and are placed to the account of the 
curse : how, at last, her despairing lover demands to have the vault 
opened ; and the wretch Rowland — partly from curiosity, partly from 
malice — determined to be there to see. As they and some church- fol- 
lowers come near the door of the vault, they hear knockings, and des- 
perate plunges within ; Saville swoons away, the crowd falls back in 
terror, and the hardened Rowland alone dares unlock the door. Instantly, 
in her shroud, mad, starved, with the flesh gnawed from her own fair 
shoulders, rushes out the maniac Charlotte : in phrensied half-reason she 
has seized Rowland by the throat, with the strength of insanity has 
strangled him, and then falls dead upon the steps of the vault! Of 
Saville — who, as having swooned, is spared all this scene of horror, and 
who leaves the country for ever — little or nothing is more said : and 
Clopton Hall remains a ruin, tenanted by ghosts and bats. 

P. S. If thought fit, after the fashion of Parisian charcoal-burners in 
ill-ventilated bed-rooms, Charlotte may have recoi'ded her experiences 
in the vault, by v/riting with a rusty nail on the coffin-plates. 

Now, the gist of this Victor-Hugo tale of terror is its general truth : 
a true end of a truly-named family, in its own neighbourhood, and long 
since extinct: the house, now rebuilt and restyled — the vault — the 
picture of that poor unfortunate, (how unsearchable in real life often 
are the ways of Providence ! how frequently the innocent suffer for the 



CHARLOTTE CLOPTON. 357 

guilty !) — the gloomy well — and something extant of the story — remains 
still, and are known to some at Stratford. To do the thing graphically, 
one should go there, and gain materials on the spot : and nothing couid 
be easier than to mix with them fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century cos- 
tumes, modes of thought, and historical allusions ; accessories of the 
humorous, if the age demands it, might relieve the pathetic ; Charlotte's 
own innocence and piety might be made to soften her hard fate, with the 
assurance of a better life; Saville might become a wisely-resigned 
recluse; and while the sins of the fathers are not gently, though justly, 
visited on the children, the villain of the story meets his full reward. 

Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill ! 
Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the 
kingdom ! — As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and 
unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the Buried- 
alive-one! — is it not new, thrilling, terrible? Who is he that would 
pander to the popular taste for details of dreadful, cruel, criminal, and 
useless abominations? "Should such a one as I?" In emptying my 
head of the notion, I have ministered too much already : but the sample 
of henbane is poured out, an offering to the infernal manes, and poisons 
no longer the current of my thoughts. Thy ghost, poor beautiful Char- 
lotte ! shall not be disturbed by me ; thy misfortunes sleep with thee. 
Nevertheless, this tale about a more amiable Charlotte than Werter's, 
so naturally also falling into the orthodox three-volume measure, is 
capable of being fabricated into something of deep, romantic, tragical 
interest ; such a character, in such circumstances, in such an age, and 
such a place : I commend it to those of the Anglo-Gallic school, who 
love the domestically horrible, and delight in unsunned sorrows : but, I 
throw not any one topic away as a waif, for the casual passer-by to pick 
up on the highway. Shadows, indeed, are flung upon the waters, but 
Phulax still holds the substance with tenacious teeth. 

Stop awhile, my dog and shadow, and generously drop the world a 

morsel ; be not quite so bold when no one thinks of robbing you, and 

spare your gasconade : the expediency of a sample has been cleverly 

suggested, and we ego et canis mens, royal in munificence, do graciously 

accede. Will this serve the purpose, my ever-pensive public? At any 

rate, with some aid of intellect in readers, it is happily an extract which 

explains itself — the death of poor infatuated Margaret: we will suppose 

preliminaries, and hazard the abrupt. 

******** 



368 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

" That bitter speech shot home ; it had sped like an arrow to her 
brain : it had flown to her heart like the breath of pestilence : for Row- 
land to be rough, uncourteous, unkind, might cause indeed many a pang ; 
but such conduct had long become a habit, and woman's charitable soul 
excused moroseness in him, whom slie loved more than life itself, more 
than honour. But now, when the dread laugh of a seemingly more 
righteous world was daily, hourly, to be feared against her — when the 
cold finger of scorn was preparing to be pointed at her fading beauty, 
and her altered form — now, when indulgence is most due, and cruelty 
has a sting more scorpion than ever — to be taunted with that once-kind 
tongue with having rightfully inherited a curse — to be told, in a sort of 
fiendish triumph, that some ancient family grudge, forsooth, against her 
father's fame, certainly as much as the selfish motives of a libertine 
professed, had warped the will of Rowland to her ruin — to know, to 
hear, yea, from his own lips, that the oft-repented crime of her warm 
and credulous youth — of her too free, unsuspicious affection — had 
calmly been contrived by the heart she clung to for her first, her only 
love — here was misery, here was madness! 

"Rowland, at the approach of footsteps, had hastily slunk away behind 
the accustomed panel, and alone in the chamber was left poor Margaret : 
his last sneering speech, the mockery of his sarcastic pity, were still 
liaunting her ear with echoes full of wretchedness; and she had uttered 
one faint cry, and sunk swooning on a couch, when her sister entered. 

"Charlotte, gentle Charlotte, had nothing of the hardness of a heroine; 
her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized ; 
but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of 
trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for 
Margaret ; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of dispo- 
sition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the heart. 
Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of per- 
ception ; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister, sus- 
picion had been felt as a wickedness, and had long been lulled asleep : 
now, however, it awaked in all its terrors ; and, as Margaret lay faint- 
ing, the sorrowful condition of one soon to be a mother who never was 
a wife, was only too apparent. She touched her, sprinkled water on her 
pale face, and, as the fixed eyes opened suddenly, Charlotte started at 
their strange wild glare : they glittered with a freezing brilliancy, and 
stared around with the vacuity of an image. Could Margaret be mad? 
Slie bit her tender lips with sullen rage, and a gnashing desperation ; her 



CHARLOTTE CLOPTON. 



369 



cheek was cold, white, and clammy as the cheek of a corpse ; her hair, 
still woven with the strings of pearl she often wore, hung down loose 
and dishevelled, except that on her flushing brow the crisp curls stood 
on end, as a nest of snakes. And now a sudden thought seemed to 
strike the brain ; her eyes were set in a steady horror ; slowly, with 
dread determination, as if inspired by some fearful being, other than 
herself, uprose Margaret; and, while her frightened sister, shuddering, 
fell back, she glided, still gazing on vacancy, to the door : so, like a 
ghost through the dark corridor, down those old familiar stairs, and 
away through the Armory-hall; Charlotte now more calmly following, for 
her father's library, where his use was to study late, opened out of it, 
and surely the conscience-stricken Margaret was going in her penitence 
to him. But, see ! she has silently passed by ; her hand is on the lock 
of the hall-door ; with one last look of despairing recklessness behind 
her, as taking an eternal leave of that awe-struck sister, the door turns 
upon its hinge, and she. still with slow solemnity, goes out. Whither, oh 
God! — whither? The night is black as pitch, rainy, tempestuous; the 
old knight's guests, at Clopton Hall have gladly and right wisely pre- 
ferred even such questionable accommodation as the blue chamber, the 
dreary white apartment looking on the moat — nay, the haunted room of 
the parricide himself — to encountering the dangers and darkness of a 
night-return so desperate ; but Margaret, in her gayest evening attire, 
near upon so foul a midnight in November, stalks like a spectre down the 
splashy steps. Charlotte follows, calls, runs to her — but cannot rescue 
from some settled purpose, horribly suggested, that gentle fearful crea- 
ture, now so changed. Suddenly in the dark she has lost her. Which 
way did the maniac turn 1 — whither in that desolate gloom shall Char- 
lotte fly to find her? Guided by the taper still twinkling in her father's 
study, she rushes back in terror to the hall ; and then — Help, help ! — 
torches, torches ! The household is roused, dull lanterns glance among 
the shrubberies ; pine-lights, ill-shielded from wind and rain by cap or 
cloak, are seen dotting the park in every direction, and dance about through 
the darkness, like sportive wild-fires : Sir Clement in moody calmness 
looks prepared for any thing the worst, like a man who anticipates evil 
lon2-desei*ved ; the broken-hearted mother is on her knees at the cold 
door-steps, striving to pierce the gloom with her eyes, and ejaculating 
distracted prayers: and so the live-long night — that night of doubt, 
and dread, and dreariness — through bitter hours of confusion and dis- 
may, they sought poor Margaret — and found her not ! 
Y 



370 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

"But, with morning's light came the awful certainty. At the end of 
a terraced walk, mournfully shaded hy high-cropped yews, stood an 
arbour, and behind it, half-hidden among rank weeds, was an old half- 
forgotten fountain ; there, on many a sultry summer night, had Row- 
land met with Margaret, and there had she resolved in terrible remorse 
to perish. With the seeming fore-thought of reason, and the resolution 
of a phrensied fortitude, she had bound a quantity of matted weeds 
about her face, and twisted her hands in her fettering garments, that the 
shallow pool might not in cruel kindness fail to drown her; she lay 
scarcely half immersed in those waters of death; a few lazy tench 
floating sluggishly about, appeared to be curiously inspecting their 
ghastly, uninvited guest; and the fragments of an enamelled miniature, 
with some torn letters in the hand-writing of Rowland Beauvoir, were 
found scattered on the overflowing margin of the pool." 

Well, unkindly whelp, if your bone has no pickings better than this, 
not a cur shall envy you the sorry banquet. Yet, had my genius been 
better educated in the science of French cookery, this might have been 
served up with higher seasoning as a savoury ragout : but you get it in 
simplicity, scarce grilled ; and in sooth, good world, it is easier to sneer 
at a novel than to imagine one ; and far more self-complacency may be 
gained by manfully affecting to despise the novelist, than by adding to 
his honours in the compliment of humble imitation. 



Things supernatural have every where and every when exercised 
mortal curiosity. Fear and credulity support the arms of superstition, 
fierce as city griffins, rampant as the lion and the unicorn ; and foras- 
much as no creature, Nelson not excepted, can truly boast of having 
never known fear, and no man also — from polite Voltaire, shrewd Hunie, 
Leviathan Hobbes, and erudite Gibbon, down to the most stultified Van- 
Diemanite — can honestly swear himself free from the influence of some 
sort of faith, for thus much the marvellous and the terrible meet with 
universal popularity. Now, one or two curious matters connected witli 
those "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in 
your philosophy," which have even occurred to mine own self, (whereof, 
to gratify you, shall be a little more anon), have heretofore induced me 
to touch upon sundry interesting points, which, like pikemen round their 
chief, throng about the topic of 



THE MARVELLOUS. 



THE MARVELLOUS. 



371 



A BOOK, SO simply titled, with haply underneath a gigantic note of 

admiration between two humble queries | !? would positively, my worthy 

publisher, make your worship's fortune. For it should concern ghosts, 

dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true 

vaticinations : no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, 

but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially detailed ; 

no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, no 

stories from the ' Terrific Register,' nor fancies of hysterical females in 

Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins should be 

excluded : and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should propose an 

anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's ^Philosophy of 

Sleep,' Scott's ^Demonology,'' treatises on Apparitions, and many a rare 

black-letter alchemical pamphlet, might lend us here their aid; the 

British Museum is full of well-attested ghost-stories, and there are very 

few old ladies unable to add to the supply : then, this ghost department 

might be climaxed by the author's own experience ; forasmuch as he is 

ready to avouch that a person's fetch was heard by many, and seen by 

some, in an old country-house, a hundred miles away from the place 

of death, at the instant of its happening. 

As to omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and 
cross were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools 
quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the 
Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the 
Royal Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire 
near about the commencement of open hostility, among ruling powers, 
to our church, commerce, and constitution; and I myself can tell a 
tale of no less than eight remarkable warnings happening one day to a 
poor friend, who died on the next, which none could be expected to. 
believe unless I delivered it on oath as having been an eye-witness to the 
facts. Dreams also — strange, vague, mysterious word ; there is a 
gloomy look in it, a dreary intonation that makes the very flesh creep : 
the records of public justice will show many a murder revealed by 
them, as instance the Red Barn; more than one poor client, in the 
clutch of a "respectable" attorney, has been helped to his rights by 
their influence ; from Agamemnon and Pilate, down to Napoleon, the 
oppressors of mankind have in those had kindly warning. Dreams — 
how many millions false and foolish, for the one proving to be true ! — but 



372 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

that one, how clear, determinate, and lasting, as ministered by far other 
agency than imagination taking its sport while reason slumbers ! Who 
has not tales to tell of dreams ? A warning not to go on board such 
and such a ship — which founders; a strange unlikely scene fixed upon 
the mind, concerning friends and circumstances miles away, exactly in 
tlie manner and at the time of its occurrence ; the fore-shown coming 
of an unexpected guest; the pourtrayed visage of a secret enemy: 
tliese, and others like these, many can attest, and I not least. And of 
other marvels, though here left unconsidered, yet might much be said : 
truths so strange, that the pages of romance would not trench on such 
extravagance ; combinations so unlikely, that thrice twelve cast success- 
ively by proper dice, were but probability to those. Thus, in authorial 
fjishion, has the marvellous dwelt upon my mind; and thus would I 
suggest a hand-book thereof to catering booksellers and the insa- 
tiable public. 



Against bears in a stage-coach, pointers in a drawing-room, lap dogs 
in a vis-d-vis, and monkeys in a lady's boudoir, my love of comfort and 
propriety enters strong protest ; an emancipated parrot attracts my sym- 
pathy far less than bright-eyed children feeding their testy pet, for I 
dread the cannibal temptation of those soft fair fingers, when brought 
into collision with Polly's hook and eye; gigantic Newfoundlanders 
dragging their perpetual chains, larks and linnets trilling the faint song 
of liberty behind their pi'ison bars, cold green snakes stewing in a 
school-boy's pocket, and dormice nestling in a lady's glove, summon my 
antipathies ; a cargo of five hundred pigs, with whom I had once the 
honour of sailing from Cork to London, were far from pleasant as com- 
pagnons de voyage ; neither can I sleep with kittens in the room. Nev- 
ertheless, no one can profess truer compassion, truer friendship (if you 
will) for the animal creation : often have I walked on in weariness, 
rather than increase the strain upon the Rosinantes of an omnibus ; and 
my greatest school scrape was occasioned by thrashing the favoured 
scion of a noble house for cruelty to a cat. Such and such-like — for 
we learn from ^sop (Fable eighty-eight, to wit) that trumpeters deserve 
to be unpopular — is my physical zeal in the cause of poor dumb 
brutes: nor is my regard for them the less in matters metaphysical. 
Bishop Butler, we may all of us remember, in 'the Analogy,' argues that 
the objector against a man's immortality must show good cause why that 



PSYCHOTHERION. 



373 



which exists, should ever cease to exist ; and, until that good cause be 
shown, the weight of probability is in favour of continual being. Now, 
for my part, I wish to be informed why this probability should not be 
extended to that innocent maltreated class, whom God's merey made 
with equal skill, and sustains with equal care, as in the case of man, 
and — dare we add ? — of angels. Doth He not feed the ravens ? Do the 
young lions not gather what He giveth ? Doth a sparrow fall to the 
ground without Our Father? and is not the unsinning multitude of 
Nineveh's young children climaxed with "much cattle?" It is true, 
there may be mighty difference between "the spirit of a man that goeth 
upward, and the spirit of a beast that goeth downward in the earth :" 
but mark this, there is a spirit in the beast ; and as man's eternal heaven 
may lie in some superior sphere, so that temporarily designed for the 
lower animals may be seen in the renovated earth. It is also true, that 
St, Paul, arguing for the temporal livelihood of Christian ministers from 
the type of "not muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn," asks, 
"Doth God care for oxen?" — or, in effect, doth He legislate (I speak 
soberly, though the sublime treads on the ridiculous,) for a stable? — 
and the implication is, " To thy dutiful husbandry, O man ! such lesser 
cares are left." Sorry, righteously sorry, would it make any good 
man's heart to think that the Creator had ceased to care for the meanest 
of his creatures : in a certain sense 

" He sees with equal eye, as God of all, 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall ;" 

and, assured that carelessness in a just Creator of his poor dependent 
creatures must be impossible, I submit that, critically speaking, some 
laudable variation might be made in that text by the simple considera- 
tion that jicKti is not so strictly rendered "care for" as Ktkrai. Scrip, 
ture, then, so far from militating against the possible truth, that animals 
have souls, would seem, by a side-long glance, to countenance the doc- 
trine : and now let us for a passing moment turn and see what aid is 
given to us by moral philosophy. 

No case can be conceived more hard or more unjust than that of a 
sentient creature (on the hypothesis of its having no soul, no conscience, 
necessarily quite innocent), thrown into a world of cruelty and tyranny, 
without the chance of compensation for sufferings undeserved. Neither 
can any good government be so partial, as (limiting the whole existence 
of animals to an hour, a day, a year,) to allow one of a litter to be pam- 
pered with continual luxuries, and another to be tortured for all its little 

32 



374 AN ATTHOR'S MIND. 

life by blows, famine, disease — and in its lingering death by the scientific 
scalpels of a critical Majendie or a cold-blooded Spallanzani. Remember, 
that in the so-called parallel case of partialities among men — the this- 
world's choice of a Jacob, the this-world's rejection of an Esau — the 
answer is obvious : there are two scales to the balance, there is yet another 
world. Far be it from us to think that all things are not then to be cleared 
up ; that the innocent little ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaan- 
ites will not then be heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indis- 
criminately in an overwhelming national judgment ; that the pleas of evil 
education and example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then 
thrown aside as vain excuse ; and that eventual justice will not with facility 
explain every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case 
of soulless extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, 
no explanation ; whether in pain or pleasure, they have lived and they 
have died forgotten by their Maker, and left to the casual kindness or 
cruelty of, towards them at least, irresponsible masters. How different 
the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in 
various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to 
justify the ways of God to" — brutes: we need not then consider, with 
a certain French abbe, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for 
their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, 
account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits of 
men in process of being purged from their offences : we need not regard 
them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible deities 
craving the idolatries of India and Egypt. The truth commends itself 
by mere simplicity : nakedness betrays its Eve-like innocence of guile 
or error : those living creatures whom we call brutes and beasts, 
have, in their degree, the breath of God within them, as well as His 
handiwork upon them. And, candid theologian, tell me why — in that 
Millenium so long looked-for, when, after a fiery purgation, this earth 
shall have its sabbath, and when those who for a time were " caught up 
into the air," descending again with their Lord and his ten thousand 
saints, shall bodily dwell with others risen in the flesh for that happy 
season on this renovated globe — tell me why there should not be some 
tithe of the animal creation made to rise again to minister in pleasure, 
as they once ministered in pain ? And for the rest, the other nine, what 
hinders them from tenanting a thousand happy fields in other of the 
large domains of space? What hinders those poor dumb slaves from 
enjoying some emancipate existence — we need not perhaps accord them 



PSYCHOTHERION. 375 

more of immortality than justice demands for compensation — for a defi- 
nite time, a millenium let us think, in scores of those million orbs that 
twinkle in the galaxy? 

Space stretches wide enough for every grain 
Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas, 
Each separate in its sphere, to stand apart 
As far as sun from sun. 

Shall I then say what hinders? — the littleness of man's mind, refusing 
possibility of room for those countless quadrillions ; and the selfishness of 
his pride, scorning the more generous savage, whose doctrine (certainly 
too lax in liberality) raises the beast to a level with mankind, and 

" Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky. 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

Truly, the Creator's justice, and mercy, and the majesty of his king- 
dom, give hope of after-life to all creation : Saint Antony of Padua did 
waste time in homilizing birds, beasts, and fishes ; but may they not find 
blessings, though ignorant of priests ? — And now, suffer me, in my cur- 
rent fashion, to glance at a few other considerations affecting this topic. 
It will be admitted, I suppose, that the lower animals possess, in their 
degree, similar cerebral or at least nervous mechanism with ourselves; 
in their degree, I say ; for a zoophyte and a caterpillar have brains, 
though not in the head ; and to this day Waterton does not know whether 
he shot a man or a monkey, so closely is his nondescript linked with 
either hand to the grovelling Australian and the erect orang outang. 
Brutes are nerved as we are, and uncivilized man possesses instincts 
like them : all we can with any show of reason deny them is moral 
sense, and in our arbitrary refusal of this, and our summary disposal of 
what we are pleased to term instinct, we take credit to ourselves for 
exclusive participation in that immaterial essence which is called Soul. 
But is it, in candour, true that brutes have no moral sense? Obviously, 
since moral sense is a growing thing, and ascending in the scale of being, 
and since man is its chief receptacle on earth, we ought to be able to 
take the best instances of animal morals from those creatures which 
have come most within the influence of human example ; as pets of 
every kind, but mainly dogs. Does not a puppy, that has stolen a sweet 
morsel from some butcher's stall, fly, though none pursue him? Is a 
fox-hound not conscience-stricken for his hany of the sheep-fold ? and 
who will deny some sense of duty, and no little strength of affection, in 



376 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

a shepherd's dog? Have not Covvper's now historic hares displayed an 
educated and unnatural confidence ; and many a gray parrot, though 
limited in speech, said many a witty thing? — Again, read some common 
collection of canine anecdotes: What essential difference is there 
between the affectionate watch kept by man over his brother's bed of 
sickness, and that which has been known of more than one poor cur, 
whose solicitude has extended even to dying on his master's grave? 
The soldier's faithful poodle licks his wounds upon the stormy battle- 
field ; and Landseer's colley-dog tears up the turf, and howls the shep- 
herd's requiem. What real distinction can we make between a high 
sense of duty in the captain who is the last to leave his sinking ship, 
and that in the watchful terrier, whom neither tempting morsels nor 
menaced blows can induce to desert the ploughman's smock committed 
to his care? Once more: Who does not recognise individuality of 
character in animals? A dog, or a horse, or a tame deer, or, in fact, 
any domesticated creature, will act throughout life, in a certain course of 
disposition, at least as consistently as most masters: it will also have its 
whims and ways, likings and dislikings, habits, fears, joys, and sorrows ; 
and, verily, in patience, courage, gratitude, and obedience, will put its 
monarch to the blush. 

But upon this theme — meagre as the sketch may be, fanciful, illogical 
— my cursory notions have too long detained you. I had intended barely 
to have introduced a black-looking Greek composite, serving for name 
to an unwritten essay which we will imagine in existence as 

PSYCHOTHERION, 

M INCONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT ON THE SOULS OF BRUTES; 

And my thoughts have run on thus far so little conclusively (I humbly 
admit to you), that we will, to save trouble, leave the riddle as unsolved 
as ever, and gain no better advantage than thus having loosely adverted 
lo another fancy of your author's mind. 



Not yet is my mind a simple freeman, a private, unincumbered, indi- 
vidual self-possessor: its slaves are not yet all manumitted; I lack not 
subjects ; I am no lord of depopulated regions ; albeit my aim is indeed 
akin to that of old Rufus, and Goldsmith's tyrannical Squire of Auburn ; 



THE CONFESSIONAL. 



377 



I wish to clear my hunting-grounds, to make a solitude, and call it 
peace. Slowly, but still surely, am I working out that will. Mean- 
while, however, there is no need to advertise for heroes ; they are only 
too rife, clinging like bats to the curtains of my chambers of imagery, 
or with attendant satellites hanging in bunches, as swarming bees about 
their monarch, to the rafters of my brain. Selection is the hardest dif- 
ficulty; here is the labour, here the toil; because for just selection 
there should be good reasons. Now, amongst other my multitudinous 
authorial projects, this perhaps is not the worst ; namely, by a series of 
dissimilar novels, psychological rather than religious, and for interest's 
sake laid in diverse ages and countries, to illustrate separately the most 
rampant errors of the Papacy. For example, say that Lewis's ' Monk ' is 
a strong delineation of the evils consequent on constrained and unchosen 
celibacy ; though its colouring be meretricious, though its details offend 
the moralities of nature, still it is a book replete to thoughtful minds 
with terrible teaching — be not high-minded, but fear. In like manner, 
guilty thoughts dropped upon innocent young hearts in that foul corner, 

THE CONFESSIONAL, 

might make a stirring tale, or haply a series of them : the cowled hypocrite 
suggesting crime to those whose answer is all innocence ; his schemes 
of ambition, or avarice, or lust, slowly elaborated by the fiend-like pur- 
poses to which he puts his ill-used knowledge of the human heart ; his 
sacrilegious violation of the holy grievings made by mistaken penitence. 
History should oring its collateral assistance : the Medicean Queens, 
Venice, bloody Spain, hard-visaged monks calmly directing the engines 
of torture, the poison of anonymous calumny, and dread secrets more 
dreadfully betrayed, could furnish much of truthful precedent. The 
bad obstructions placed between the sinner and his God by selfish priest- 
craft; the souls that would return again, like Noah's weary dove, 
enticed by ravens to forsake the ark, mate with them, and feed on their 
banquet of corruption; the social, religious, philosophic, and eternal 
harms brought out in full detail ; the progress of this world's misery in 
the lives of the confessing, and of studious crime in the heart of the 
absolver: a scene laid among the high Alps, and the *sunny plains they 
topple over ; the time, that of some murderous Simon de Montfort ; the 
actors, Waldensian saints, and demon inquisitors ; the prominent char- 
acters, a plausible intriguing friar, (as of old a monk of Cluni,) whose 

32* 



378 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

ambition is the popedom, and whose conscience has no scruple about 
means, bloody, bad, vindictive, atheistic ; and then his victims, a youth 
that he trains from infancy to the sole end of poisoning, subtly and 
slowly, all who stand in his path ; a girl who loves this youth, and who, 
flying from the foul friar in the day of temptation, betakes her to the 
mountains, and ultimately saves her lover from his terrible destination 
in guilt, by hiding him in her own haven of refuge, the persecuted little 
church ; and with these materials to work upon, I need hardly detail to 
you an intricate plot and an obvious denouement. 

This class of theme, it is probable, has exercised the talents of many ; 
but as the evils of confessing to deceitful man, and of blind trust in his 
deleterious advice, have not specifically met my eye, the subject is new 
to me, and may be so to others. Still, I stay not now further to enlarge 
upon it ; I must press on ; and will not cruelly encourage the birth of 
thoughts brought forth only to be destroyed, like father Saturn's babes 
— the anthropophagite. 

A good reason for selection at last presents itself. Sundry collateral 
ancestors of mine [every body from Cain downwards must have had 
ancestors ; so no quibbling, please, nor quarrelling about so exploded an 
absurdity as family-pride,] were lucky enough in days lang syne to 
appropriate to themselves, amongst other matters, a respectable allowance 
of forfeited monastic territory ; and I know it by this token : that in 
yonder venerable chest of archives and muniments, rest in their own 
dust of ages, duly and clearly assorted, all those abbey deeds from the 
times of Henry Beauclerc. Here 's a fine unlooked-for opportunity of 
making dull ancestral spots classic ground, famous among men ; here 's 
a chance of immortalizing the crumbling ruins of an obscure, but inter- 
esting, abbey-church ; here 's a fair field for dragging in all that one 
knows or does not know, all that parchments can prove, or fancy can 
invent, of redoubtable or reprobate progenitors, and investing the place 
of their possessions with a glory beyond heraldry. Much is on my mind 
of the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship : 
and why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the 
bleak, rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run 
between the Yorkshire hills? Why not talk about those names of gen- 
tle blood, familial* to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, 
"Vavasour and RatcliflTe? Why not press into the service of instructive 
novelism truths stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, 
and names of higher note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes ? 



THE PRIOR OF MARRICK. 379 

All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in 

THE PRIOR OF MARRICK. 

And now for a story of idolatry. It seems an absurdity, an insanity , 
it is one — both. But think it out. Is it quite impossible, quite incred- 
ible ? Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation. Our prior 
was once a good man — an easy, kind, and amiable : he takes the cowl 
in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting 
family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will. And 
wherefore melancholy? There was brought up with him, from the very 
nursery, a fair girl, the weeping orphan of a neighbouring squire, who 
had buckled on his harness, and fallen in the wars : they loved, of 
course, and the deeper, because secretly and without permission : they 
were too young to marry, and indeed had thought little of the matter; 
still, substance and shadow, body and soul, were scarcely more needful 
to each other, or more united. But — a hacking cough — a hectic cheek 
— a wasting frame, were to blue-eyed Mary the remorseless harbingers 
of death, and Eustace, standing on her early grave, was in heart a 
widower: henceforth he had no aim in life ; the cloister was — so thought 
he, as many do — his best refuge, to dream upon the past, to soothe his 
present sorrows, and earn for a future world the pleasures lost in this. 
Time, the best anodyne short of what Eustace could not buy at Rome 
— true-healing godliness — alleviates his grief, and makes him less sad, 
but not wiser ; years pass, the desire of preeminence in his own small 
world has hitherto furnished incentives to existence, and he find himself 
a prior too soon ; for he has nothing more to live for. Yes : there is 
an object; the turmoil of small ambition with its petty cares is past, 
and the now motiveless man lingers in yearning thought on the only 
white spot in his gloomy journey, the green oasis of his desert life, that 
dream of early love. He has long loved the fair, quiet image of our 
Lady of Marrick, unwittingly, for another Mary's sake; half-oblivious 
of the past in scheming for the present, he has knelt at midnight before 
that figure of the Virgin-mother, and knew not why he trembled ; 
he thought it the ecstacy of devotion, the warm-gushing flood of calm- 
ness, which prayer confers upon care confessed. But now, he sees it, he 
knows it ; there is, indeed, good cause : how miraculously the white 
marble face crrows into resemblance with hers! the same sainted look 
of delicate unearthly beauty, the same white cheek, so still and unruf- 
fled even by a smile, the same turn of heavenly triumph on the lip, the 



380 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

same wild compassion in the eye ! Great God — he loves again ! — that 
staid, grave, melancholy man, loves with more than youthful fondness; 
the image is now dearer than the most sacred ; there is a halo round it, 
like light from heaven: he adores its placid, eternal, changeless aspect; 
iCit could move, the charm would half dissolve; he loves it — as an 
image ! And then how rapturously joins he with the wondering choir 
of more stagnant worshippers, while they yield to this substantial form, 
this stone-transmigration of his love, this tangible, unpassionate, abiding, 
present deity, the holy hymns of praise, due only to the unseen God ! 
How gladly he sings her titles, ascribing all excellence to her! How 
tenderly falls he at her feet, with eyes lighted as in youth ! How earn- 
estly he prays to his fixed image — to it, not through it, for his heart is 
there ! How zealously he longs for her honour, her worship among 
men — hers, the presiding idol of that Gothic pile, the hallowed Lady, 
the goddess-queen of Marrick ! Stop — can he do nothing for her, can 
he venture nothing in her service? Other shrines are rich, other images 
decked in gold and jewels; there is yet an object for his useless life, 
there are yet ends to be attained, ends — that can justify the means. He 
longs for wealth, he plots for it, he dares for it : he plans lying miracles, 
and thousands flock to the shrine ; he waylays dying men, and, by 
threatened dread of torments of the damned, extortionizes conscience 
into unjust riches for himself; he accuses the innocent, and reaps the 
fine ; he connives at the guilty, and fingers the bribe. So wealth flows 
in, and the altar of his idol is hung with cloth of gold, her diadem is 
alight with gems, costly offerings deck her temple, bending crowds 
kneel to her divinity. Is he not happy? Is he not content? Oh, no: 
an insatiate demon has possessed him ; with more than Pygmalion's 
insanity, he loves that image; he dreams, he thinks of that one unchang- 
ing form. The marvelling brotherhood, credulous witnesses of such 
deep devotion, hold him for a saint ; and Rome, at the wish of the world, 
sends him, as to a living St. Eustatius, the patent of canonization : they 
praise him, honour him, pray to him; but he contemptuously (and they 
take it for humility) spurns a gift which speaks of any other heaven 
than the presence of that one fair, beautiful, beloved statue. A thought 
fills him, and that with joy : he has heard of sacrifices in old time, 
immolations, offerings up of self, as the highest act of a devout worship, 
per; he cares not for earth nor for heaven; and one night, in his enthu- 
siastic vigils, the phrensy of idolatry arms that old man's own weak hand 
against himself, and he falls at the statue's feet, self-murdered, its martyr. 



THE PRIOR OF MARRICK. 



381 



Here were scope for psychology; here were subtle unwindings 
of motive, trackings of reason, intricate anatomizations of the heart. 
All ages, before these last in which we live, have been worshippers, even 
to excess, of "unknown gods," "too superstitious:" we, upon whom the 
ends of the world are fallen, may be thought to be beyond a danger 
into which the wisest of old time were entrapped : we scarcely allow 
that the Brahmin may, notwithstanding, be a learned man and a shrewd, 
when we see him fall before his monster; we have not wits to understand 
how the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman dynasties could be 
so besotted. For this superior illumination of mind, let us thank not 
ourselves, but the Light of the world ; and, warned by the history of 
ages, let us beware how we place created things to mediate between us 
and the most High ; let us be shy of symbolic emblems — of pictures, 
images, observances — lest they grow into forms that engross the mind, 
and fill it with a swarm of substantial idols. 

Now, this tale of the '■Prior of MarricW would, but for the present 
premature abortion, have seen daylight in the form of an auto-biography 
— the catastrophe, of course, being added by some brother-monk, who 
winds up all with his moral : and to get at this auto-biographical sketch 
— a thing of fragments and wild soliloquies, incidentally laying bare the 
heart's disease, and the poisonous breathings of idolatrous influence — I 
could easily, and after the true novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, 
somewhat as follows : Let me go gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or 
cart, say for a sportsman's pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit- 
clerk's holiday : I drop upon the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely 
a vestige of its former beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place ; 
being a bit of an antiquary, I rout up the sexton, (sexton, cobbler, and 
general huckster,) resolved to lionize the old desecrated precinct : I find 
the sexton a character, a humourist; he, cobbler-like, looks inquisitively 
at my caoutchouc shooting-shoes, and hints that he too is an artist in the 
water-proof line ; then follows question as how, and rejoinder as thus. 
Our sexton has got a name among his neighbours for his capital double- 
leather brogues, warranted to carry you dry-shod through a river ; and, 
warmed by my brandy-flask and honhomie, considering me moreover 
little likely to set up a rival shop, cunningly communicates his secret: 
he puts parchment between the leathers! — Parchment, my good man? 
where can you get your parchment hereabouts? I spoke innocently, 
for I thought only of ticketing some grouse for my friends southward • 
but the question staggered my sexton so sensibly, that I came to the 



382 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

uncharitable conclusion — he had stolen it. And then follows confes- 
sion: how, among the rubbish in a vault, he had found a small oak 
chest — broke it open — no coins, no trinkets, "no nothing," — except 
parchment ; a lot of leaves tidily written, and — warranted to keep out 
the wet. A few shillings and a tankard make the treasure mine, I 
promising as extra to send a huge bundle of ancient indentures in 
place of the precious manuscript. Thus, in the way of Mackenzie's 
^Man of Feeling,^ we become fragmentary where we fear to be tedious; 
and so, in a good historic epoch, among the wars of the Roses, sur- 
rounded by friars and nuns, outlaws and border-riders, chivalrous 
knights and sturdy bowyers, consign I to the oblivescent firm of Cap- 
ulet and Co. my happily destroyed ^ Prior of Marrick.' 



A CRANK boat needs ballast ; and of happy fortune is it for a disposition 
towards natural levity, when educational gravity has helped to steady it. 
Upon the vivacious, let the reflective supervene : to the gay, suffer in its 
season the addition of the serious. Amongst other wholesome topics of 
of meditation — for wholesome it is to the healthy spirit, although of some 
little danger to the presumptuous and inflated — the study of the sure word 
of Prophecy has more than once excited the writing propensity of your 
author's mind. On most matters it has been my fate, rather from habits 
of incurable revery than from any want of opportunities, to think more than 
to read ; and therefore it is, with very due diffidence, that as far as others 
and their judgments are concerned, I can ever hope to claim originality 
or novelty. To my own conscience, however, these things are reversed ; 
for contemplation has produced that as new to my own mind, which may 
be old to others deeper read, and has thought those ideas original, which 
are only so to its own fancy. Very little, then, must such as I reason- 
ably hope to add on Prophetical Interpretation ; the Universal Wisdom 
of two millenaries cannot be expected to gain any thing from the pass- 
ing thought of a hodiernal unit: if any fancies in my brain are really 
new, and hitherto unbroached upon the subject, it can scarcely be 
doubted but that they are false ; so very little reliance do principles of 
catholicity allow to be placed upon "private interpretations." 

With thus much of apology to those alike who will find, and those 
who will not find, any thing of novelty in my notions, I still do not with- 
hold tbrm. By here a little and there a little, is the general mind 



THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 333 

instructed : it would be better for the world if every mighty tome really 
contributed its grain. 

The prophecies of Holy Writ appear to me to have one great pecu- 
liarity, distinguishing them from all other prophecies, if any, real or 
pretended ; and that peculiarity I deferentially conceive to be this : that, 
whereas all human prophecies profess to have but one fulfilment, the 
divine have avowedly many true fulfilments. The former may indeed 
light upon some one coincidence, and may exult in the accident as a 
proof of truth ; the latter bounds as it were (like George Herbert's sab- 
baths) from one to another, and another, through some forty centuries, 
equally fulfilled in each case, but still looking forward with hope to some 
grander catastrophe : it is not that they are loosely suited, like the Del- 
phic oracles, to whatever may turn up, but that they, by a felicitous 
adaptation, sit closely into each era which the Architect of Ages has 
arranged. Pythonic divination may be likened to a loose bag, which 
would hold and involve with equal ease almost any circumstance ; biblical 
prophecy to an exact mould, into which alone, though not all similar in 
perfection, its own true casts will fit : or again, in another view of the 
matter, accept this similitude : let the All-seeing Eye be the centre of 
many concentric circles, beholding equally in perspective the circum- 
ference of each, and for accordance with human periods of time meas- 
uring off segments by converging radii : separately marked on each 
segment of the wheel within wheel, in the way of actual fulfilment, as 
well as type and antitype, will appear its satisfied word of prophecy, 
shining onward yet as it becomes more and more final, until time is 
melted in eternity. Thus, it is perhaps not impossible that every inter- 
pretation of wise and pious men may alike be right, and hold together ; 
for different minds travel on the different peripheries. So our Lord (to 
take a familiar instance) speaks of his second advent in terms equally 
applicable to the destruction of one city, of the accumulated hosts at 
Armageddon, and of this material earth : Antiochus and Antichrist occur 
prospectively within the same pair of radii at differing distances ; and, 
in like manner and varying degrees, may, for aught we can tell, such 
incarnations of the evil principle as papal Rome, or revolutionary 
Ehrope, or infidel Cosmopolitism ; or, again, such heads of parties, such 
indexes of the general mind, as a Caesar, an Attila, a Cromwell, a 
Napoleon, a — whoever be the next. So also of hours, days, years, 
eras; all may and do coexist in harmonious and mutual relations. 
Good men, those who combine prayer with study, need not fear neces- 



384 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

sary difference of result, from holding different views ; the grand error 
IS too loosely generalizing ; a little circle suits our finite ken ; we cannot, 
as yet, mentally span the universe. These crude and cursory remarks 
may serve to introduce a likely-looking idea to which my thoughts have 
given entertainment, and which, with others of a similar sort, were once 
to have come forth in an essay-form, headed 

THE SEVEN CHURCHES; 

moreover, for aught that has come across my reading, to be additionally 
styled ^A New Interpretation, for these Latter Days.'' Without desiring 
to do other than quite confirm the literal view, as having related prima- 
rily to those local churches of old times, geographically in Asia Minor ; 
without attempting to dispute that they may have an individual reference 
to varieties of personal character, and probably of different Christian 
sects ; I imagine that we may discover, in the Apocalyptic prospect of 
these seven churches, an historical view of Christianity, from the earliest 
ages to the last: beginning as it did, purely, warmly, and laboriously, 
with the apostolic emblematic Ephesus, and to end with the "shall He 
find faith on earth" of luke-warm Laodicea : thus Smyrna would sym- 
bolize the state of the church under Diocletian, the "tribulation ten 
days:" Pergamus, perhaps the Byzantine age, "where Satan's seat is" 
the Balaam and Balak of empire and priesthood ; Thyatira, the avowed 
commencement of the Papacy, "Jezebel," &c. ; Sardis, the dreary 
void of the dark ages, the "ready to die;" Philadelphia, the rise of 
Protestantism, " an open door, a little strength ;" and Laodicea, (the 
riches of civilization choking the plant of Christianity,) its decline, and, 
but for the Founder's second coming, its fall ;. if, indeed, this were possible. 
The elucidation of these several hints might show some striking con- 
firmations of the notion ; which, as every thing else in this book, would 
humbly claim your indulgence, reader, for my sketches must be rapid, 
and their descriptions brief. Concurrently, however, with this, (which 
I know not whether any prophetic scholiasts have mentioned or not,) there 
may be deduced a still further interpretation, equally, as far as I am 
concerned, underived from the lucubrations of others. This other 
interpretation involves a typical view of the general characteristics of 
Christendom's seven true churches, as they are to be found standing at 
the coming of their Lord ; the Asiatic seven may be assimilated, in their 
religious peculiarities, with the national Protestant churches of modern 
Europe : what order should be preserved in this assimilation, unless 



REVISION. — LAY SERMONS. 3,95 

indeed it be that of eldersliip, it miglit be difficult to decide ; but, 
excluding those communities which idol-worship has unchurched, and 
leaving out of view such anomalies as America presents, having no 
national religion, we shall find seven true churches now existing, between 
which and the Asiatics many curious parallels might be run : the seven 
are, those of England, Scotland, Holland, Prussia, perhaps Switzerland, 
Sweden, and Germany. Without professing to be quite confident as to 
the list, the idea remains the same : it is but a light hint on a weighty 
subject, demanding more investigation than my slender powers can at 
present compass. It is mex'ely thrown out as undigested matter; a 
crude notion let it rest : if ever I aspire to the dignity and dogmatism 
of a theological teacher, it must be after more and deeper inquiry of 
the Newtons, Faber, Frei'e, Croly, Keith, and other learned interpreters, 
than it is possible or proper to make in a hurry : volumes have been, 
and volumes might be again, written for and against any prophecy 
unfulfilled ; it is dangerous to teach speculations ; for, if found false, 
they tend to bring holy truths into disrepute. Let me then put upon 
the shelf, as a humble layman should, my hitherto unaccomplished 
prophetical treatise ; and receive its mention for little more than my 
true revelation of another phase of authorship. 



And many like attempts have been hazarded by me in the mode 
theological ; though, from some cause or other, they have mostly fallen 
abortive. Were mention here made of the more completed efforts of 
your author's mind, in this walk of literature, or of others, it might too 
evidently lay bare the mystery of my mask; a piece of secret informa- 
tion intended not as yet to be bestowed. But this book — purporting to 
be the medley of my mind, the hona Jide emptying of its multifarious 
fancies — must of necessity, if honest, pourtray all the wanings and 
waxings of an ever-changing lunar disposition : so, haply you shall turn 
from a play to a sermon, from a novel to a moral treatise, from a satire 
or an epigram to a religious essay. Such and so inconsistent is authorial 
man. Here then, in somewhat of order, should have followed lengthily 
various other writings of serious import, half- fashioned, and from con- 
flicting reasons left — perhaps for ever — half-finished. But considering 
the crude and apparently careless nature of this present book, and 
taking into account the solemn and responsible manner in which such 
Z 33 



386 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

high topics ought invariably to be treated, I have struck out, without 
remorse or mercy, all except a mere mention of the subjects alluded to. 
The contiguity of lighter matter demands this sacrifice ; not that I am 
one of those who deem a cheerful face and a prayerful heart incongru- 
ous : there is danger in a man, however religious, when his brow lowers, 
and his cheek is stern; so did Cromwell murder Charles; so did Mary 
(though bigoted, sincere,) consign Cranmer to the flames and Jane to the 
scaffold : innocence and mirth are near of kin, and the tear of peni- 
tence is no stranger to the laughter-loving eye. But I ramble as usual. 
Let it suffice to say, that in accordance with common prejudices, I suf- 
fer my mind to be shorn of its consecrated rays ; for albeit my moral 
censor has spared the prophetical ideas, and one or two other serious 
sobrieties, on the ground that, although they are mere hints, they are 
at all events hints of good, still more experimental and more hazardous 
pieces of biblical criticism have been not unwisely immolated. The full 
cause of this will appear in the mere title of the first of these half- 
attempted essays, viz: 

THE WISDOM OF REVISION; 

whereof my predication shall be simply and strictly nil. 

The next piece of serious study, as yet little more than a root in my 
mind, was to have fructified in the form of 

HOMELY EXPOSITIONS, 

or domestic readings in Scripture for daily use in family worship, with 
an easy, sensible, useful sort of commentary ; a book calculated expressly 
for the understandings, wants, vices, temptations, and peculiarities of 
household servants, and quite opposed to the usual plans of injuriously 
raising doubts to lay them, of insisting upon obsolete Judaisms, of strict 
theological controversy, of enlarging to satiety on the meaning of pas- 
sages too obvious to require explanation, and ingeniously slurring over 
those which really need it ; indeed, of pursuing the courses generally 
adopted by the mass of commentators. 
A further notion extended to 

LAY SERMONS. 

whereof are many written: their principal peculiarities consist in being 
each of a quarter-hour length, as little as possible regarding Jews and 
their didactic histories, and, as much as might be, crowding ideas, and 



SCRIPTURE PHYSICS.— HEATHENISM. 337 

images, and out-of-the-way knowledge of all sorts, into the good service 
of illustrating Gospel truths. 

Another religious essay has been relinquished, although to a great 
degree effected, from the apprehension that it may suggest matter fanci- 
ful or false : also, in part, from the material being perhaps of too slender 
a character to insist upon. Its name stood thus, 

SCRIPTURAL PHYSICS; 

being an attempt to vindicate the wisdom of Holy Writ in matters of 
natural science ; for example, cosmogony, geology, the probable centre 
of the earth, the vitality and circulation of the blood, hints of magnet- 
ism and electricity, a solar system, a plurality of worlds, the earth's 
shape, inclined axis, situation in space, and connection with other spheres, 
the separate existence of disembodied life, the laws of optics, much of 
recondite natural history : — all these can be easily proved to be alluded 
to in detached, or ingeniously compared, passages of the Hebrew Scrip, 
tures. It is very likely, however, that Huntington has anticipated some 
of this, although I have never met with his writings ; and a great deal 
more of it is mentioned in notes and sermons which many have read or 
heard. Until, therefore, I become surer of neither invading the prov- 
inces of others, nor of detracting from their wisdom, let those ill-written 
fancies still lie dormant in my desk. 

A fifth tractate on things theological, still in the egg state, was to have 
been indued with the rather startling appellation of 

AN APOLOGY FOR HEATHENISM; 

especially as contrasted with practical atheism, which, truth to tell, is 
the contradictory sort of religion most universally professed among the 
moderns : working out the idea, that any-how it is better to have many 
objects of veneration than none, and that, although idol-worship is a 
dreadful sin, still it is not so utterly hopeless as actual ungodliness. 
That, among the heathens, temporal judgment ever vindicated the true 
Divinity ; whereas the consummation of the more modern unworshiping 
world will be an eternal one: so, by the difference in punishments 
comparing that of their criminalities. Showing also that, however cor- 
rupted afterwards by impure rites and fatuous iniquities, heathenism 
was, in its most ancient form, little more than the hieroglyphic dress of 
truth : this exemplified by Moses and the brazen serpent, by interpreta- 



388 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

lions of Grecian mythology, shown, after the manner of perhaps too 
ingenious Lord Bacon, to be consistent with philosophy and religion ; 
by the way, in which Egyptian priests satisfied so good and shrewd, 
though credulous, a mind as that of Herodotus ; by Hesiod's ' Theogony ;'' 
by the practical testimony of the whole educated world in earliest times 
to the deep meaning involved in idolatrous rites ; by the mysteries of 
Eleusis in particular; by the characters of all most enlightened hea- 
thens — as Cicero, Socrates, and Plato — (half-convinced of the Godhead's 
unity, and still afraid to disavow His plurality,) contrasted with those 
of the school of Pyrrho, and Lucretius, and the later Epicureans. The 
possibility of early allusions to the Trinity, as "Let us make man," 
etc., having led to the idea of more than one God ; and if so, in some 
sort, its veniality. 

All the above might be applied with some force, and, if so, with no 
little value, to modern false semblances of religion, ^nd non-religion; to 
Roman Catholicism, with its images, its services in an unknown tongue, 
its symbols, its adoption of heathen festivals, its actual placing of many 
Gods in the throne of One ; to Mammonism, as practically a religion 
as if the golden calf of Babylon were standard at Cornhill; to Volup- 
tatism — if I may fabricate a name for pleasure-hunters, following still, 
with Corybantic fury, the orgic revels of Osiris or Astarte : in brief, to 
all the shades of human heresy, on this side or on that of the golden 
mean, the worship of one true God, as revealed to us in His three mys- 
terious characters. 

But, query? Has not all this, and the very title, for any thing I know, 
been done already by another, by a wiser? and, if so, by whom? — 
Speak, some friend : it is the misfortune of mere thinkers (and this 
present amygdaloid mass, this breccia book, exemplifies it well) to stum- 
ble frequently upon fancies too good not to have been long ago appro- 
priated by others like-minded. A read, or heard, hint may be the 
unerring clue, and we vainly imagine some old labyrinth to be our new 
discovery : education renders up the master-key, and we come to regard 
ancient treasuries as wealth of our own amassing, from which we deem 
it our right to filch as recklessly as he from the mint of Croesus, who so 
filled his pockets — ay, his mouth — that we read he iPs0v(rTo- Who, in 
this age of literature, can be fully condemned, or heartily acquitted of 
plagiarism? An age — and none so little in advance or in arrear of it 
as I — of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas unpatented, and 
books that have outlived copy-right. But this has detained us long 



BIBLICAL SIMILES. 



389 



enough : for the present, my brain is quit of its heathenish exculpations : 
let us pass on ; many regiments are yet to be reviewed ; their uniforms 
[Hibernice] are various, but their flag is one. 

A last serious subject — (they grow tedious) — is a fair field for inge- 
nious explanation and Oriental poetry, 

THE SIMILES OF SCRIPTURE: 

(of course " similes " is an English word : the author of a recent ' Essay 
on Magna Charta' has been learned enough to write it "similse," for 
which original piece of Latinity let him be congratulated; I safely fol- 
low Johnson, who would have roared like a lion at "similia;" and, 
though Shakspeare does write it "similies," it may stoutly be contended 
that this is of mixed metal, and that Matthew Prior's "similes" is the 
purer sample: all the above being a praiseworthy parenthesis.) 

The similes of Scripture, then, were to have been demonstrated apt 
and happy : for there is indeed both majesty, and loveliness, and pro- 
priety, and strict resemblance in them. "As a rolling thing before the 
whirlwind," — " as when a standard-bearer fainteth " — " as the rushing of 
mighty waters," — "as gleaning grapes when the vintage is done," — "as 
a dream," — "as the morning dew," — "as" — but the whole book is a 
garden of similitudes; they are "like the sand upon the sea-shore for 
multitude." It is, however, too true, that often-times the baldness of 
translation deprives poetry, Eastern especially, of its fervour, its glow, 
its gush, and blush of beauty : to quote Aristotle's example, it too fre- 
quently converts the rosy-fingered Morn into the red-fisted ; and so the 
poetry of dawning-day, with its dew-dropped flowers, its healthy refresh- 
ment, its "rosy-fingers" drawing aside the star-spangled curtain of 
night, falls at once into the low notion of a foggy morning, and is sug- 
gestive only of red-fisted Abigails struggling continuously with the 
deposits of a London atmosphere. In like manner, (for all this has not 
been an episode beside the purpose,) many a roughly rendered simil- 
itude of Scripture might be advantageously vindicated ; local diversities 
and Orientalisms might be explained in such a treatise : for example, in 
the ^Canticles,'' the "beloved among the sons," is compared with an 
apple-tree among the trees of the wood :" now, amongst us, an apple- 
tree is stunted and unsightly, and always degenerates in a wood ; whereas 
the Eastern apple-tree, probably one of the citron class, (to be more 
correct,) may be a magnificent monarch of the forest. "Camphire," to 
a Western mind, is not suggestive of the sweetest perfume, and perhaps 

33* 



390 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

the word may be amended into the marginal "cypress," or cedar, or 
some other: as "a bottle in the smoke," loses its propriety for an image, 
until shown to be a wine-skin. " Who is this that cometh out of the 
wilderness, like pillars of smoke?" — probably intending the swiftly, 
rushing columns o^ sand flying on the wings of the whirlwind. "Thine 
eyes are like the fish-pools in Heshbon," might well be softened into 
fountains — tearful, calm, resplendent, and rejoicing ; and in showing the 
poetic fitness of comparing the bride to a landscape, it might clearly be 
set out how emblematic of Jewish millennial prosperity and of Christian 
universality, that bride was ; while comparisons of a like un-European 
imagery might be taken from other Eastern poets, who will not scruple 
to compare that rare beauty, a straight Grecian nose, with a tower, and 
admire above all things the Cleopatra-coloured hair which they call 
purple, and we auburn. Very much might be done in this vein of lit- 
erature, but it must be by a man at once an Oriental scholar and a nat- 
ui'al poet: the idioms of ancient and modern times should be more 
considered, and something of apologetic explanation offered to an English 
ear for phrases such as "the mountains skipping like rams," "the horse 
swallowing the ground with fierceness," and represented as being afraid 
as a grasshopper." A thousand like instances could be displayed with 
little searching ; let the above be taken as they are meant, for good, and 
as of zeal for showing the best of books to the best advantage : but it 
will appear that this essay trenches on the former one so slenderly hinted 
at, as ' The Wisdom of Revision,'' and therefore has been stated too much 
at length already. Let it then rest on the shelf till a better season. 
For this time, good reader, I, following up the object of self-relieving, 
thank you for your patience, and will turn to other themes of a more 
sublunary aspect. 



One of the most natural and indigenous productions of a true author's 
mind, is, by common consent, an epic poem : verily, a wearisome, 
unnecessary, unfashionable bit of writing. Nevertheless, let my can- 
dour humbly acknowledge that, for the larger canticle of two mortal 
days, I was brooding over, and diligently brewing up, a right happy, 
capital, and noble-minded thesis, no other than 

HOME. 

Alas, for the epidemy to which, iew can doubt, ideas are subject! 
Alas, for the conflict of prolific geniuses, wherewith the world's quiet is 



HOME, AN EPIC. 39I 

disturbed! not impossibly, this very book now in progress of inditing 
will come to be classed as a "Patch-work," an "011a Podrida," a 
" Book without a name," or some other such like rechauff^e publication ; 
whereas I protest its idea to be exclusively mine own, and conceived long 
before its seeming congeners saw the light in definite advertisements — 
at least to my beholding. And similarly went it with my poor epic : 
scarcely had a general plan suggested itself to my musings, and 
divers particular morsels thereof assumed "their unpremeditative lay;" 
scarcely had I jotted down a staid synopsis, and a goodly array of 
metrical specimens ; when some intrusive newspaper displayed to ine in 
black and white a good-natured notice of somebody else's ^ Home, an 
Epic' So, as in the case of ' Nero,' and haply of other subjects, had it 
come to pass, that my high-mettled racer had made another false start ; 
that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been self-appropriated, 
was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the flag of another king ; 
that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into the pendulum regular, 
ities of metre, was much ado about nothing ; and all those pretty fancies 
were the catalogued property of another. Such a subject, too! intrin- 
sically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, besides Hope, Memory, 
and Imagination, if only one could manage it well enough to be named 
in the same breath with Campbell, Rogers, and Akenside. Well, it 
was a mental mortification ; for I am full of moral land-marks, and 
would not (poetically speaking) for the world move rooted termini into 
other people's grounds. Whether the field has been well or ill pre-occu- 
pied I wot not, having neither seen the poem nor heard its maker's name : 
therefore shall my charity hope well of it, and mourn over the unmerited 
oblivion which generally greets modern poetry — yea, upon its very natal- 
day. Nevertheless, as an upright man will never wish barefacedly to 
steal from others, so does he determine at all times to claim independ- 
ently his own : to be robbed, and not resent it (I speak foolishly), is the 
next mean thing after pilfering itself; and rash will be thy daring, O 
literary larcener! (can such things be?) if thou art found unpermis- 
sively appropriating even such sorry spoil as these poor seedlings of still 
possible volumes. 

Prose and verse are allowed to have some disguising differences, at 
least in termination ; and as we must not — so hints the public taste — spoil 
honest prose, bad as it may be, with too much intermixture of worse 
verse, it will be prudent in me to be sparing of my specimens. Yet, 
who will endure so staccato a page of jerking sentences as a confirmea 



392 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

synopsis "? — "Well, any thing rather than poetry," says the world; so, 
for better or worse, I will jot down prosaically a few of my all but 
impromptu imaginings on Home. 

After some general propositions, it would be proper to indulge the 
orthodoxy of invocation ; not to Muses, however, but to tlie subject itself; 
for now-a-days, in lieu of definite deities, our worship has regard to theo- 
ries, doctrines, and other abstract idolisms : and thereafter should follow 
at length an historical retrospect of domestic life, from the savage to the 
transition states of hunters and warriors ; Nimrods and New Zealanders ; 
Actceons and Avanese, Attilas, Roderics, and all the Ercles' vein or that 
of mad Cambyses, Hindoos and Fuegians, Greece, Egypt, Etruria, and 
Troy, in those old days when funds and taxes were not invented, but 
people had to fight for their dinner, and be their own police : so in a due 
course of circumconsideration to more modern conditions, from ourselves 
as central civilization, to Cochin China, and extreme Mexico, to Arch- 
angel and Polynesia. 

Divers national peculiarities of the physique of homes; as, Tartars' 
tents, Esquimaux snow-pits, Caffi'e kraals, Steppe huts, South-sea palm- 
thatch, tree-villages, caves, log-cabins, and so forth. Then, a wide 
view of the homes of higher society, first Continental, afterwards Brit- 
ish; through all the different phases of comfort to be found in heath- 
hovels, cottages, ornees, villas, parsonage-houses, squirealities, seats, town 
mansions, and royal palaces. Thus, with a contrastive peep or two 
about the feverish neighbourhood of a factory, up this musty alley, and 
down that winding lane, we should have considered briefly all the 
external accidents of home. The miserable condition of the homeless, 
whether rich or poor ; an oak with its tap-root broken, a house on wheels, 
a boat without a compass, and all that sort of thing : together with due 
declamation about soldiers spending twenty years in India, shipwrecked 
Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out hopelessly for 
ever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other absentees, voluntary 
or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton affluence, poor 
laws, mendicancy, and Ireland ; not omitting some thrilling cases of bar- 
baric destitution. 

Now come we lawfully to descant upon matters more mental and sen- 
timental — the meiaphysique of the subject— the pleasures and pains of 
Home. As thus, most cursorily: the nursery, with its dear innocent 
joys; the school-boy, holiday feelings and scholastic cruelties; the desk- 
abhorring clerk ; the over-worked milliner ; the starving fomily of fac- 



HOME, AN EPIC. 393 

tory children, and of agricultural labourers, and of workers in coal 
mines and iron furnaces, with earnest exhortations to the rich to pour 
their horns of plenty on the poor. England, once a safer and a happier 
land, under the law of charity : now fast verging into a despotic central- 
ized system, kept together by bayonets and constables' staves. Home a 
refuge for all ; for queens and princes from their cumbrous state, as 
well as for clowns from their hedging and ditching. The home of love, 
and its thousand blessings, founded on mutual confidence, religion, open- 
heartedness, communion of interest, absence of selfishness, and so on : 
the honoured father, due subordination, and results; the loving wife, 
obedient children, and cheerful servants. Absolute, though most kind, 
monarchy the best government for a home ; with digressions about Aus- 
tria and China, and such laudable paternal rule ; and contra, bitter cas- 
tigation of republican misrule, its evils and their results, for which see 
Old Athens and New York, and certain spots half-way between them. 

The pains of home : most various indeed, caused by all sorts of 
opposite harms — too much constraint or too little, open bad example or 
impossible good example, omissions and commissions, duty relaxed by 
indulgence, and duty tightened into tyranny ; but mainly and generally 
attributable to the non-assertion or other abuse of parental authority. 
The spoiled child, and his progress of indulgence, unchecked passions, 
dissipation, crime, and ruin. Interested interlopers, as former friends, 
relatives, flatterers, and busy parasites, undermining that bond of con- 
fidence without which home falls to pieces ; the gloomy spirit of reserve, 
discouraging every thing like generous open-heartedness ; menial influ- 
ences lowering their subject to their own base level ; discords, religious, 
political, and social ; the harmful consequence of over-expenditure to ape 
the hobbies or grandeur of the wealthier; foolish education beyond 
one's sphere, as the baker's daughter taking lessons in Italian, and opera- 
stricken butcher's-boys strumming the guitar ; immoral tendencies, gam- 
bling, drinking, and other dissipations ; and the aggregate of discomforts, 
of every sort and kind ; with cures for all these evils ; and to end finally 
by a grand climax of supplication, invocation, imprecation, resignation, 
and beatification, in the regular crash of a stout-expiring overture. 

It's all very well, objects reader, and very easy to consider this done; 
but the difficulty is — not so much to do it, answers writer, as to escape 
the bother of prolixity by proving how much has been done, and how 
speedily all might be even completed, had poor poesy in these ticketing 
times only a fair field and no disfavour; for there is at hand good grist, 



394 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

ready ground, baked and caked, and waiting for its eaters. But in 
this age of prose-devouring and verse-despising, hardy indeed should 
I be, if I adventured to bore the poor, much-abused, uncomplaining 
public with hundreds of lines out of a dormant epic; the very phrase is 
a lullaby; it's as catching as a yawn; well will it be for me if my 
thread-bare domino conceals me, for whose better fame could brook the 
scandal of having fathered or fostered so slumbering an embryo? — Let 
tlien a few shreds and patches suffice — a brick or two for the house : 
and verily I know they will, be they never so scanty ; for what man 
of education does not now entertain a just abhorrence of the Muses, 
the nine antiquated maiden aunts destined for ever to be pensioned 
on that money-making nice young man, Mammon's great heir-at-law, 
Prose Prose, Esq. ? 

With humblest fear, then, and infinite apology, behold, in all sober 
seriousness, what the labour of such a file as I am might betimes work 
into a respectable commencement ; I don't pretend it is one ; but valeat 
quantum, take it as it stands, unweeded, unpruned, uncared-for, unaltered 

Home, happy word, dear England's ancient boast, 
Thou strongest castle on her sea-girt coast. 
Thou full fair name for comfort, love, and rest. 
Haven of refuge found and peace possest. 
Oasis in the desert, star of light 
Spangling the dreary dark of this world's night. 
All-hallowed spot of angel-trodden ground 
Where Jacob's ladder plants its lowest round, 
Imperial realm amid the slavish world. 
Where Freedom's banner ever floats unfurl'd. 
Fair island of the blest, earth's richest wealth, 
Her plague-struck body's little all of health. 
Home, gentle name, I woo thee to my song. 
To thee my praise, to thee my prayers belong: 
Inspire me with thy beauty, bid me teem 
With gracious musings worthy of my theme: 
Spirit of Love, the soul of Home thou art. 
Fan with divinest thoughts my kindling heart; 
Spirit of Power, in pray'rs thine aid I ask. 
Uphold me, bless me to my holy task ; 
Spirit of Truth, guide thou my wayward wing; 
Love, Power, and Truth, be with me while I sing. 

VUa : my consolation is that somewhere may be read, in hot-pressed 
print, too, many worse poeticals than these, wWch, however, nine readers 



HOME, AN EPIC. 395 

out of ten will have had the worldly wisdom to skip ; and the tenth is 
soon satiated : yet a tithe is something, at least so think the modern 
Levites; so, then, on second thoughts, a victim who is so good a listener 
must not be let off quite so cheaply. However, to vary a little this 
melancholy musing, and to gild the compulsory pill, Reserve shall be 
served up sonnet-wise. (P. S. I love the sonnet, maligned as it is both 
by ill-attempting friend and semi-sneering foe : of course, in our epic, 
Reserve ambles not about in this uncertain rhyme, but duly stalks 
abroad in the uniform dress ; iambically still, though extricated from 
those involutions, time out of mind the requisite of sonnets.) Stand 
forth to be chastised, unpopular 

RESERVE. 

Thou chilling, freezing fiend, Love's mortal bane, 

Lethargic poison of the moral sense, 
Killing those high-soul'd children of the brain, 

Warm Enterprise and noble Confidence, 

Fly from the threshold, traitor — get thee hence! 
Without thee, we are open, cheerful, kind; 
Mistrusting none but self, injurious self. 

Of and to others wishing only good ; 
With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind. 

Suggesting all the world a viperous brood 
That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf: 

Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood. 
Honour unhonoured. Courage lacking nerve, 
Beneath thy dull domestic curse, Reserve. 

Without professing much tendency to the uxorious, all may blame- 
lessly confess that they see exceeding beauty in a good wife ; and we 
need never apologize for the unexpected company of ladies: at off-hand 
then let this one sit for her portrait. Enduring listener, will the follow- 
ing serve our purpose in striving worthily to apostrophize 

THE WIFE. 

Behold, how fair of eye, and mild of mien. 
Walks forth of marriage yonder gentle queen: 
What chaste sobriety whene'er she speaks. 
What glad content sits smiling on her cheeks, 
What plans of goodness in that bosom glow. 
What prudent care is throned upon her brow. 
What tender truth in all she does or says. 
What pleasantness and peace in all her ways! 



396 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

For ever blooming on that cheerful face 
Home's best affections grow divine in grace ; 
Her eyes are ray'd with love, serene and bright; 
Charity wreathes her lips with smiles of light ; 
Her kindly voice hath music in its notes ; 
And heav'n's own atmosphere around her floats! 

Thus, wife-like, for better or worse, is the above portrait charmant 
consigned to the dingy digits of an undistinguishing printer's-devil ; so 
doth CaDsar's dust come to stop a bung-hole. One morsel more, about 
children, blessed children, and for this bout I shall have tilted sufficiently 
in the Muses' court; or, if it must be so said, unhandsome critic, stilted 
to satiety in false heroics: stay — not false; judge me, my heart. Sup 
pose then an imaginary parent thus to speak about his 

INFANT DAUGHTERS. 
Oh ye, my beauteous nest of snow-white doves. 
What wealth could price for me your guileless loves? 
My earthly cherubim, my precious pearls. 
My pretty flock of loving little girls. 
My stores of happiness with least alloy. 
My treasuries of hope and trembling joy ! 
Yon toothless darling, nestled soft and wann 
On a young yearning mother's cradling arm ; 
The soft angelic smiles of natural grace 
Tinting with love that other little face ; 
And the sweet budding of this sinless mind 
In winning ways, that round my heart-strings wind. 
Dear winning ways — dear nameless winning ways, 
That send me joyous to my God in praise. 

Enough! not heartlessly, but to shame the heartlessness of your. 
ennui, let me veil those holiest affections ; yes, even at the risk of leav- 
ing nominatives widowed of their faithful verbs, will I, until required, 
epicise no more. Let these mauled bits be intimations of what a little 
care might have made a little better. Gladly will I keep all the remain, 
der in a state quiescent, even to doubling Horace's wholesome prescrip- 
tion of nine years : for it is impossible but that your fervent poet, in the 
heat of inspiration, (credit me, lack-wits, there is such a thing,) should 
blurt out many an unpalatable bit of advice, rebuke, or virtuous indig- 
nation against homes in general, for the which sundry conscience-stricken 
particulars might uncharitably arraign him. But divers other notions 
are crowding into the retina of my mind's-eye : I must leave my epic 
as you see it, and bid farewell, a long farewell, to 'Home.' Still shall 



GRECIAN SAYINGS. 397 

my egotism have to appear for many weary pages a most impartial and 
universal friend to the world of bibliopolists ; I cater multifariously for 
all varieties of the literary profession : booksellers at least must own me 
as their friend, though the lucky purse of Fortunatus saves me from 
being impaled upon the point of poor Goldsmith's epigram, and I leave 

to [ ] the questionable praise of being their hack. For Bentley and 

Hatchard, alike with Rivington and Frazer, for Colburn and Nisbet, as 
well as Knight, Tilt, Tyas, Moxon, and Murray, I seem to be gratuit- 
ously pouring out in equal measure my versatile meditations ; at this 
sign all customers may be suited ; only, shop-lifters will be visited with 
the utmost rigour of that obnoxious monosyllable. — Well, poor Epic, 
good night to you, and my benison on those who love you. 



To any one, much in the habit of thoughtful revery, how very unsat- 
isfactory those notions look in writing. He can't half unravel the 
chaotic cobwebs of his mind ; as he plods along penning it, a thousand 
fancies flit about him too intangibly for fixed words, and his ever-teem- 
ing hot imagination cannot away Avith the slow process of concreted 
composition. For me, I must write impromptu, or not at all ; none of 
your conventional impromptus, toils of half-a-day, as little instantaneous 
as sundry patent lights ; no working-up of laborious epigrams, sedu- 
lously sharpened antitheses, or scintillative trifles, diligently filed and 
polished ; but the positive impromptu of longing to be an adept at short- 
hand-writing, by way of catching as they fly those swift-winged 
thoughts; not quick enough by half; most of those bright colours 
unfixed ; most of those fair semi-notions unrecorded. To say nothing 
of reasons of time, there being other things to do, and reasons of 
space, there being other things to write. And thus, good friend, 
affectionately believe the best of these crude intimations of things 
intellectual, which the husbandry of good diligence, and the golden 
shower of Danse's enamoured, and the smiles of the Sun of encourage- 
ment might heretofore have ripened into authorship ; nay, more, perhaps 
may still : believe, generously, that if I could coil off" quietly, like 
unwrapped cocoons, all these epics, tragics, theologies, pathetics, ana- 
lytics, and didactics, they would show in fairer forms, and better-defined 
proportions: believe, also, truly, that I could, if I would, and that I 
would, if the game were worth its candle. 

But, sooth to say, the over-gorged public may well regard that small- 

34 



398 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

tomed author with most favourable eye, who condenses himself within 
the narrowest limits; a diable boiteux, not the huge spirit of the Hartz, 
concentrated meat-lozenges, not soup maigre ; pocket-pistols of literature, 
not lumbering parks of its artillery. Verily, there is a mightier mass 
of typography than of readers; and the reading world, from very 
brevity of life, must rush, at a Bedouin pace, over the illimitable plains 
of newspaper publication, while the pyramids of dusty folio are left to 
stand in solitary proud neglect. The cursory railroad spirit is abroad : 
we abhor that old painful ploughing through axle-deep ruts : the friend 
who will skate with us, is welcomer than he who holds us freezing by 
the button ; and the teacher, who suggestively bounds in his balloon on 
the tops of a chain of arguments, is more popular in lecturing than he 
of the old school, who must duteously and laboriously struggle up and 
down those airy promontories. 

I love an avenue, though, like Lord Ashburton's magnificent mile of 
yew-trees, it may lead to nothing, and therefore have not expunged this 
unnecessary preface : rather, will I bluntly come upon a next subject, 
another work in my unseen circulating library, 

THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF GRECIAN WISDOM, 

ILLUSTRATED IN SEVEN TALES. 

Cordially may this theme be commended to the more illuminating 
booksellers: well would it be greeted by the picture-loving public. It 
might come out from time to time as a periodical, in a classical wrap- 
per: might be decorated with the sages' physiognomies, copied from 
antique gems, with the fancied passage in each one's life that provoked 
the saying, and with specific illustrations of the exemplifying story. 
There should be a brilliant preface, introducing the seven sages to each 
other and the reader, after the ensample of Plutarch, and exhausting all 
the antiquarianism, all the memoirism, and all the varia-lectionism of the 
subject. The different tales should be of different countries and ages 
of the world, to insure variety, and give an easier exit to ennui. As 
thus: Solon's "Know thyself" might be fitted to an Eastern favourite 
raised suddenly to power, or a poor and honest Glasgow weaver all 
upon a day served as heir to a Scotch barony, when he forthwith falls 
into fashionable vices. Chilo's "Note the end of life" might concern 
the merriment of the drunkard's career, and its end — delirium tremens. 
or spontaneous combustion : better, perhaps, as less vulgarian, the 



GRECIAN SAYINGS. 399 

grandeur and assassination of some Milanese ducal tyrant. The 
" Watch your opportunity " of Pittacus could be shown in the fortunes 
of some Whittington of trade, some Washington of peace, or some Napo- 
leon of war. Bias's uncharitable bias, believing the worst of the 
world, might seem to some a truism, to others a falsehood, according as 
their fellows have served them well or ill ; but a brief history of some 
hypocrite's life, some misanthrope's experience, or some Arabian Stylo- 
batist's resolve to be perched above this black earth on a column like 
a stork, might help to prove that "the majority are wicked." As for 
Periander's aphorism, that "to industry all things are possible," pyra- 
mid-building old Egypt, or the Druids of Stonehenge, or Scottish pi-o- 
verbial perseverance in Australian sheep rearing and Canadian timber 
clearing, will carry the point by acclamation. Cleobulus, praising 
" moderation in all things," would glorify a moral warning of universal 
application, as to pleasures, riches, and rank ; or especially perhaps as 
preferring true temperance before its modern tee-total false pretences ; or 
lauding some Richard Cromwell's choice of a quiet country life, before 
the turbulent honours of a proffered Protectorate ; while Thales, with his 
all but old English proverb of "more haste, less speed," would apply 
admii'ably to Sultan Mahmoud's ruinous reforms; or to the actual injury 
gulled Britain has done to the condition of negroes in general by a vastly 
too precipitate abolition of the slave-trade : a vile evil, indeed, but a cancer 
of too long creeping to be cured in a day, a rottenness too deeply seated 
in the frame-work of the world to be extirpated by such caustic surgery 
as fire and sword; or to be quacked into health by patent gold-salve. 

Seven such tales, shrewdly setting out their several aims, and illus- 
trative of good moral maxims which wise heathens live by, would (I 
trow and trust) be somewhat better, more original — ay, and more enter- 
taining, too — than the common run of magazine adventures. It may 
not here be fair to particularize further than in the way of avowing my 
unmitigated contempt for the exploits of highwaymen, swindlers, men 
about town, and ladies of the pavd. I protest against gilding crimes, 
and palliating follies. Serve the public tables with better food, good 
Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those bring- 
ers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite acquitted of 
the evils they have caused : brilliancy of dialogue, and graphic power of 
delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if the moral be cor- 
rupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty, care-dispelling humour, to 
such merry faces as Pickwick and Co. — inimitable Pickwick — hail, all 
hail ! but triumphs of burglary, and escapes of murderers, aroint ye ! 



400 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

Why then should I throw this cargo overboard? — Friend, my sliip is 
too full ; if I could only do one thing at a time, and could finish it within 
the limits of its originating fit, these things all might be less abortive. 
But I doubt if my glorification of Greek aphorisms ever reaches any 
higher apotheosis than the airy castles sketchily built above. 



Similar in idea with these last tales, but essentially more sacred as to 
character, would be an illustrative elucidation of the seven last sayings 
of our Blessed Lord, when dying in the crucifixion. The Romish 
Church, in some of her imposing ceremonies, has caused the sayings to 
be exhibited on seven banners, which are occasionally carried before 
the holy cross : from this I probably derived the idea of detaching these 
sentences from the frame-work of their contexts, and regarding them in 
some sort as aphorisms. For a name, not to be tautologous, should be 
proposed a Grseco-Anglicism, 

THE HEPTALOGIA; 

OUR SAVIOUR'S SEVEN LAST SAYINGS. 

The addition of " hagia " might be rather too Attic for English ears ; 
and I know not whether "the Sacred Heptalogia" would not also be too 
mystical. ■ This series of tales is capable of like illustration with the 
last, except in the matter of portraits, unless indeed some eminent fathers 
of the church, or some authenticated enamels, gems, or coins, (if any,) 
displaying our Lord's likeness, served the purpose ; and of course the 
character of the stories should not be much in dissonance with the 
sacredness of the text. The first might well enforce forgiveness of 
enemies, especially if their hatred springs from misapprehension. 
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:" many a true 
story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial torture, exacted by 
sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere conviction, would illus- 
trate the prayer, and the scene might be laid among Waldensian saints 
and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might enlarge upon a 
promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the efficacy of repent- 
ance : the certainty of hope and life being co-extensive, so that it might 
still be said of the seeming worst, the brigand and the blasphemer, 
'' To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise ;" a story to check presump- 
tion, while it encourages the humility of pentitent hope ; the details of a 



HEPTALOGIA. 



401 



prodigal's career and his return, say a falsely philosophizing German 
student, or the excesses of some not ungenerous outburst of youthful 
wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate Neapolitan. The third might 
well regard filial piety: "Behold thy son — behold thy mother:" illus- 
trated perhaps by a slave scene in Morocco, or the last adieus between 
a jMaccabsean mother, and her noble children rushing on duteous death ; 
or the dangers of a son, during the Reign of Terror, protecting his pro- 
scribed parents ; or allusive to the case of many razed and fired homes 
in the Irish rebellion. The fourth, necessarily a tale of overwhelming 
calamity ultimately triumphant, '■ My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me?" — the confidence of my God still, even in His recognised 
judgments trusted in as merciful : the history of many an unrecorded 
Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear children; an aged merchant 
beggared by the roguery of others, and his very name blamelessly dis- 
honoured ; the extremity of a martyr's sufferings ; or some hunted 
soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;" which might be commented on, 
either morally only, as referring to a thirst after religion, virtue, and 
knowledge — or physically also, in some story of well-endured miseries 
at sea on a wrecking craft ; or of Christian resignation even to the hor- 
rible death of drought among the torrid sands of Africa ; or some noble 
act, like that of Sir Philip Sidney on the battle-field, or David's liba- 
tion of that desired draught from the well of Bethlehem. I need not 
remark that all these sayings might primarily be applied to their Good 
Utterer, if it seemed more advisable to shape the publication into seven 
sermons: but this, it will at once be perceived, is not the present object; 
the word " sermons " has to most men a repulsive sound, and a tale, simi- 
lar in disguised motive, may win, where an orderly discourse might 
unhappily repel: a teacher's best influences are the indirect: like the 
conquering troops at Culloden, his charge will be oblique ; his weapon 
will strike the unguarded flank, and not the opposing target. The sixth, 
"It is finished;" perhaps, not only as a fact on the true, the necessary 
value of the Christian scheme of redemption being so completed ; but, 
more generally, to display the evils and dangers of leaving mental, 
spiritual, or even worldly good designs unfinished : a tale of natural 
procrastination conquered, difficulties overcome, prejudices broken down, 
and gigantic good effected : a Russian Peter, a literary Johnson, a mis- 
sionary Neff, a Wesley, or a Henry Martyn. The seventh, descanting 
upon noble patience, and agonies vanquished by faith, the death and 
glorious expectance of a martyr, the end of one of Fox's heroes; 
A A 34* 



402 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

"Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Of necessity in these 
Christian tales there would be more of sameness than in those heathen ; 
because it would be improper and impolitic, with such theses, to enter 
much into the lower human passions and the common events of life. 
But my intentions of further proceeding in this matter have, as at 
present, very sensibly subsided ; for many wise and many good might 
reasonably object to making those holy last dying words mere pegs to 
hang moral tales upon. The idea might please one little sect, and 
anger half the world; I care not to behold it accomplished, and question 
my own capabilities ; only, as it has been an authorial project heretofore 
conceived by me, suffer it to boast this brief existence. 



It is scandalously reported of some folks that they are not musical, a 
calumny that has been whispered of myself: and, though against my 
own convictions, (who will confess he "has not music in his soul?") I 
partly acquiesce; that is to say — for, of such a charge, self-defence 
claims to explain a little — although I am charmed with all manner of 
music, still for choice I prefer a German chorus to an Italian solo, and 
an English glee to a French jig. Accordingly the operatic world have 
every reason to despise my taste : especially if I add that Welsh songs, 
and Scotch and Irish national melodies — [where are our English gone ?] 
— rejoice my heart beyond Mozart and Rossini. And now this next 
little notion is scarcely of substance sufficient to assume the garb of 
authorship : it is little more than a passing whim, but I choose for the 
very notion's sake to make it better known. Except in a very few 
instances — as Hadyn's ' Seasons,^ e. g. — Oratorios, from some conven- 
tional idea of Lent, we may suppose, seem obligated to concern matters 
sacred. Of course, every body is aware of the prayerful meaning of 
the name ; but we know also that a madrigal has long ago put off its 
monkish robe of a hymn to the Virgin, and worn the more laic habit of 
a love song. Now, it is a fact, that very many good men who delight 
in Handel's melody, and of course cannot object to psalms and anthems, 
entertain conscientious objections to hearing the Bible set to music in a 
concert-room ; and sure may we all be, that, unless the whole thing be 
regarded as a religious service, (in a mixed gay company who think of 
sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, 
and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise. 



ALFRED, AN ORATORIO, 4O3 

and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing despond- 
ency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a mind prop, 
eriy attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor splenetic, 
but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, the 
cure in future for all this would be very simple : Why not have some 
lay oratorios ? Protestants have appropriated the madrigal, and listen, 
delighted with its melody, without the needless offence of seeming to 
countenance idolatry; why should they not have solemn music, new 
or ancient as may be adapted, administering tg their patriotism, or their 
tragic interests, or historic recollections, without grating against their 
feelings of religious veneration? — To be specific, let me suggest a sub- 
ject, and show, for the benefit of any Pindar of this day, its musical 
capabilities: we are, or ought to be as Englishmen, all stirred at 
the name of 

ALFRED; 

and he would minister as well to the harmonies of an oratorio as Abel, 
or Jephtha, Moses, or St. Paul — nay, as the Messiah, or the last dread 
Judgment. Remember, our Alfred was a proficient himself, and spied 
the Danish forces in the character of a harper. What scope were here 
for gentle airs, and stirring Saxon songs! He harangues his patriot 
band, and a manly Phillips would personify with admirable taste the 
truly royal bard : he leaves Athel-switha his wife, and a fair flock of 
children in sanctuary, while he rushes to the battle-field : the church- 
men might receive their queenly charge with music : the Danes riot in 
their unguarded camp with drinking-snatches, and old -country-staves: a 
storm might occur, with elemental crash : the succeeding silence of 
nature, and distant coming on of the patriot troops at midnight ; their 
war-songs and marches nearer and nearer; the invaders surprised in 
their camp and in their cups ; the hurlyburly of the fight — a hail-stone 
chorus of arrows, a clash of thousand swords, trumpets, drums, and 
clattering horse-hoofs ; a silent interval, to introduce a single combat 
between Alfred and Hubba the Dane, with Homeric challenges, tenor 
and bass; the routed foe, in clamorous and discordant staccato; the 
conquerors pressing on in steady overwhelming concord ; how are the 
mighty fallen — and praise to the God of battles ! 

Most briefly, then, thus : there is religion enough to keep it solemn, 
without being so experimental as to intrude upon personal prejudice. 
The notion is too slight, and too slenderly worked out, even for admis- 



404 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

sion here, if I were not still, my shrewd and mindful reader, sedulously 
endeavouring to get rid of all my brain-oppressing fancies : and this, 
happening to come uppermost as I write, finds itself caught, to my com- 
fort. It is commended, if worth any thing, to the musical proficient: 
for I might as well think of adding a note to the gamut as of trying to 
compose an oratorio. 



The authorial mind is infinitely versatile : books and book-making 
are indeed its special privilege, forte, and distinguishing peculiarity ; but 
still its thoughts and regards are ever cast towards originality of idea, 
though unwritten and unprinted, in all the multitudinous departments of 
science and of art. Thus, mechanical invention, chemical discovery, 
music as above, painting as elsewhere, sculpture as below, give it exer- 
cise continually. The authorial mind never is at rest, but always to be 
seen mounted and careering on one hobby-horse or other out of its 
untiring stud. If the coin of some rude Parthian, or the fragments of 
some old Ephesian frieze, serve not as a scope for its present ingenui- 
ties, it will break out in a new method of grafting raspberries on a rose- 
bush, in the comfortable cut of a pilot-coat, or the safest machinery for a 
steamer. Ne sutor ultra cre'pidam is a rule of moderation it repudiates : 
incessant energy provokes unabated meddling, and its intuitive qualities 
of penetration, adaptation, and concentration, are only hindered by the 
accidents of life from carrying any one thing out to the point at least of 
respectable attainment. Look at Michael Angelo ; poet, painter, sculp- 
tor, architect, and author: and if indeed we are not told of Milton 
having modeled, or Horace having built up other monuments than his 
own imperishable fame, still nothing but manual habit and the world's 
encouragement were wanting to perfect, in the concrete, the conceptions 
of those plastic minds. Who will deny that Hogarth was a novelist 
and play-wright, if not indeed a heart-rending tragedian? Who will 
refuse to those nameless monastic architects who planned and fashioned 
the fretted towers of Gloucester, the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy 
steeple of Strasburg, or the delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due 
to them of being genuine poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and 
Praxiteles, Canova and Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as 
undoubtedly as Homer or Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest 
in this argument, the heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of 



ALFRED, A TRANSLATION. 405 

an Omniscient Author, fairly written in a universal tongue of grandeur 
and beauty, of skill, poetry, philosophy, and love. 

But let me not seem to prove too much, and so leap over my horse 
instead of vaulting into the saddle : though authorship may claim thus 
extensively every master-mind, from the Adorable Former of all things 
down to the humblest potter at his wheel fashioning the difficult ellipse ; 
still, in human parlance, must we limit it to common acceptations, and 
think of little more than scribe, in the name of author. Neverthe- 
less, let such seeds of thought as here are carelessly flung out, nurtured 
in the good soil of charity, and not unkindly forced into foolish accusa- 
tions of my own conceit, whereas their meaning is general, (as if for- 
sooth selfishly dibbled in with vain particularity, and not liberally 
broadcast that he may run that reads,) — let such crude considerations 
excuse my own weak and uninjurious invasion of the provinces of other 
men. The wisdom for social purposes of infinitesimal division of labour, 
may be proved good by working well ; but its lowering influences on 
the individual mind cannot be doubted : that an intelligent man should 
for a life-time be doomed to watch a valve, or twist pin-heads, or wind 
cotton, or lacquer coffin-nails, cannot be improving; and while I grant 
great evil in my desultory excesses, still I may make some use of that 
argument in the converse, and plead that it is good to exercise the mind 
on all things. Thus, in my assumed metier of authorship, let notions 
be extenuated that popularly concern it little, and yield admittance to any 
thought that may lead to that Athenian desideratum, "some new thing." 

While the echoes of the name of Alfred still linger on the mind, and 
our patriotism looks back with gratitude on his thousand virtues unsul- 
lied by a fault, (at least that History, seldom so indulgent, has recorded,) 
— while we reflect that in him were combined the wise king, the victo- 
rious general, the enlightened scholar, the humble Christian, the learned 
author, the excellent father, the admirable man in all public and private 
relations, in domestic alike with social duties, I cannot help wishing that 
forgetful England had raised some architectural trophy, as a worthy 
testimonial of Alfred the noble and the good. Whether Oxford, his pet 
child — or Westminster Hall, as mindful of the code he gave us — or 
Greenwich, as the evening resting-place of those sons of thunder whom 
the genius of Alfred first raised up to man our wooden walls — should 
be the site of some great national memorial, might admit of question ; 
but there can be none that something of the kind has been owing now 
near upon a thousand years, and that it will well become us to claim 



406 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

boastingly for England so true, so glorious a hero. With a view to 
expedite this object, and strictly to bear upon the topic in author-fashion, 
it has come into my thought how much we want a 

LIFE OF ALFRED: 

my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered 
from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old 
time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written 
originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a pop- 
ular English version is imperatively called for ; a translation from a 
translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified 
dilution of 'Dow Quixote,^) the primary source should be again consulted ; 
and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon coupled with, 
as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me in the list of 
incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by pundits of the 
Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it may have 
been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the light, and 
let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that early Ci'ich- 
ton ; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should the hint be 
ever acted on ; and if, which is still possible, an English version of the 
life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among the reading 
public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray pardon of 
its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with the world 
for writinw so much before he reads. 

But this is an accessory — an episode ; I plead for a statue to King 
Alfred : and — (now for another episode ; is there no cure for these des- 
perate parentheses?) — apropos of statues, let me, in the simple untaught 
light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some recent under- 
takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more presently, 
it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a scavenger, 
bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin, or a sun- 
dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet high : 
sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an unguarded 
elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a countenance 
so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I presume that 
Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any thing on its 
summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne of higher 
and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,) is the 



NATIONAL MEMORIALS. 407 

most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns : now, Pompey, or, as 
some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus, had that fine 
pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus; at least, this 
is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie three or four other 
columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and believed to have 
been intended to support the triglyph of some new temple. Pompey's 
idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either entering the har- 
hour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or the like ; but 
apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its acknowledged orna- 
ment as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be an architectural 
absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or nothing to sup- 
port : an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower decorated with 
shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a pyramid, or a Wal- 
tham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these supporting nothing on 
their apices,) in fact, any thing hut a Corinthian or Tuscan, or other 
regular pillar, seems to be permissable ; but for base, shaft, and capital 
to have nothing to do but lift a telescopic man from earth's maternal 
surface, does look not a little unreasonable; and therefore as much 
out of taste, as for the marble arch at Buckingham Palace to spend 
its energies in supporting a flag-staff*. 

The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit 
of criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,) 
because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the recognised 
orders of architecture ; it partakes rather of the character of a triumphal 
tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly from the rest; 
the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his positive exploits; he 
does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon, but like a gallant climber 
treading on his conquests : and, as to Phocas's column at Rome, I shall 
only say, that it illustrates my meaning, except in so far as an immense 
base to the super-imposed statuere deems it from the jockey imputation 
of carrying too light a weight, Now, with respect to the Nelson memo- 
rial, your meddlesome scribe had an unexhibited notion of his own. 
Mehemet Ali is understood to have given certain two obelisks respect- 
ively to the French and English nations: the Parisians appropriated 
theirs, and have set it up, thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an 
emblem of what African conquest has been in the heartside of France; 
but we English, less imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have 
permitted our petit cadeau to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, 
unclaimed and unconsidered. 



408 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour : 
and if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have pro- 
posed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by shallow 
Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the princi- 
pal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an alto-relievo 
of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid : the globe and 
wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame, and his 
now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance ; a sphinx, 
or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt, should 
sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three remaining door- 
ways would be represented closed, and carved externally with some 
allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile, Copenhagen, 
and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my metier, (a happy 
metier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my limned outline 
for the Nelson testimonial : the real interesting antique needle, rising 
from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and pointing to the 
skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk raised upon a 
heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an interior alto-relievo. 

It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an alihi prevented 
me from seeing, included several obelisks ; but the peculiarities I should 
have insisted on, would have been first to make good use of the real 
thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and, next, to have had 
our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the eye. 

But to return from this other desperate digression : Alfred, the great 
and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove 
of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns reverently 
keeping off" the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic in his own- 
time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so put to shame 
the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of sticking 
heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the summit'of 
a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce a most 
unlikely and chaotic treatise on 

NATIONAL MEMORIALS. 



Politics are a sore temptation to any writer, and of dalliance with a 
Delilah so seductive it is futile to declare that I am innocent. My prin- 
ciples positively are known to myself; which is a measure of self- 
knowledge, in these any-thing-arian days, of that cabinet coin-climax 



POLITICS, A MANUAL. 409 

the "8th degree of rarity;" and that those choice principles may not 
be concealed from so kind an eye as yours, friend readei*, hear me pro- 
fess myself honestly — if you approve, or shamelessly — if you will so 
think it — "a rabid Tory!" At least, by such a nomenclature sundry 
veracious journals, daily leaders of the public opinion, would call me, 
were such a groundling as I prominent enough to attract their indigna- 
tion ; and, from all that can be gathered from their condemnatory clauses 
against others like minded, I have no little reason to be proud of the 
title. For, on collation of such clauses with their causes, I find, and 
therefore take (under correction always) the rabid Tory to be — a tem- 
perate lover of order, whom his mother has taught to " fear God," his 
father to "honour the king," and his pastor to "meddle not with them 
who are given to change." A rabid Tory, in matters of national 
expenditure, remembers to have heard an old unexploded proverb, 
"There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and there is that with- 
holdeth what is due, but it tendeth to poverty ;" and he is by no means 
sure that a certain mismanaged nation is not immolating her prosperity to 
what actuaries would call economical principles. A rabid Tory is big- 
oted enough to entertain a ridiculous fear of that generation abstraction, 
Catholic Rome, whom further he is sufficiently vulgar-minded to consider 
as a lady of easy virtue arrayed in the colours of a cardinal : he thinks 
one Luther to be somewhat more than a renegade monk ; and is childish 
enough to venerate, when a man, the same Liturgy which his grand- 
mother had taught him when a boy. For other matters, the higher 
born, the better bred, the more classically educated, and the more exten- 
sively possessed of moneys and lands our honest-spoken Tory may be, 
ten to one the more is he afflicted with this rabbles : and his mad pro- 
pensities become positively criminal, when, as a magistrate or a captain 
of dragoons, he thinks himself bound in honourable duty to quell the 
enthusiasm of some disinterested patriots, whose innocent wishes rise no 
higher than to subvert the existing order of things, to secure for them- 
selves a reasonable share of parks, palaces, and pocket-money, and (as 
the very justifiable means for so happy an end) manfully to sacrifice in 
the temple of Freedom the rogues who would object to being robbed, 
and the tyrants who would be bloody enough to fight for life and liberty. 
A rabid Tory — you see it is a pet name of mine — feels no little con- 
tpmpt for a squeezable character ; and he is well assured, from history 
as well as on his own conviction, that the noble army of martyrs lived 
and died upon his principles: whereas the retrograde regiment of cow- 

35 



410 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

ards, whom the wisdom of providing for personal safety has in battle 
induced to run away, relictis non bene parmulis — the clamorous cohort 
of bullies, whom the necessities of impending castigation have sensibly 
induced to eat their words — the volunteer company of light-heeled 
swindlers, whom nature instructs that they must live, and honesty has 
neglected to inform how — every one, in short, whose grand maxim 
(quocwique modo rem) is temporizing expediency, and with whom tlie 
cogent argument "you shall" has more force than the silly conscience- 
whisper of "you ought," — contributes to swell the band which the 
professor of Toryism, the abstracted follower of principles and not 
of men, has the honour of beholding in the angle of his diagram, 
inscribed "contradictory." Not that your true Tory believes so ill of 
all his adversaries ; there are some few geese among the cranes ; an 
Abdiel here and there, who has long felt irksome in the host, but for 
false shame is there still ; sundry men, having ambitious or illuminated 
wives, and too amiable, or too prudent, to attempt a breach of peace at 
home ; some thronging the opposite benches, because their fathers and 
grandfathers topographically occupied those same seats — a decent reason, 
supposing similarity of places and names, to insure similarity of prin- 
ciples and practice; and some — I dislike them not for honesty — con- 
fessing and upholding the republican extremes, upon a belief that all 
short of these are but an unsatisfactory part of a great and glorious 
experiment. Now, the rabid Tory prefers an open foe to a false friend ; 
but your go-between, your midway sneak, your shuttlecock, your per- 
jured miser who will swear to any thing for an extra per centage — all 
these are his detestation: and although he will readily acknowledge 
some good and some wise in the adversary's ranks, still he recognises 
that tri-coloured banner as the one under which all naturally fight, who 
are poor in both worlds — with neither money nor religion. Thus much 
of my reasonable rabies. 

One may hate principles without hating men ; and for this sentiment 
we have the Highest Example. Things are either right or wrong ; if 
right, do ; if wrong, forbear : nothing can be absolutely indifferent, and 
to do a little actual evil in order to compass great hypothetical good, is 
false morality, and therefore bad government. Why should not honesty 
and plain-dealing be as inviolable publicly as privately? Why be 
guilty of such mean self-stultification as to say one thing and do another? 
It is criminal in rulers to give a helping hand to the evil which they 
deem unavoidable; let them, in preference, cease to rule, and imitate 



POLITICS, A MANUAL. 411 

the noble threat of that king for half a century whose conscience bade 
him abdicate rather than do wrone. 

o 

But to come abruptly on a title-page : often-times, in reading dele- 
terious leading articles in wrong-sided newspapers, have I longed to set 
before the world of faction 

A MANUAL OF GOOD POLITICS, 

which indeed has already been half-done, if decently begun be synony- 
mous. With this view has my author's mind heretofore thought over 
many scriptural texts, characters, doctrines, and usages; yet, let me 
freely confess the upshot of those efforts to be little satisfactory : for I 
fear much, that though there be grounds enough to go upon for one who 
is already fixed in right political principle, [orthodoxy being, as is com- 
mon among arguers, my doxy,] there may not be sufficient so to reason 
from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay them : 
and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned Fil- 
mer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little 
tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of 
absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the 
dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (compe- 
tency for so great a task being conceded — no small supposition, by the 
way,) much remains to be done in this field of discourse; as, the fear- 
ful example made of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for conduct very 
analogous with numberless instances of modern Liberalism ; the rights 
of rulers, as well as of the governed ; of kings, as well as people ; the 
connexion subsisting now, as through all former ages, between church 
and state — well indeed and deeply argued out already by such great 
minds as Coleridge and Gladstone, but perhaps, for general usefulness, 
requiring a more brief and popular discourse ; the question of passive 
obedience ; the true though unfashionable doctrine of man's general 
depravity invalidating the consignment of power to the masses ; and so 
forth. There are, however, if Scripture is to be held a constitutional 
guide, some examples to a certain extent contrary to the argument : as, 
elective monarchy in the case of Saul ; non-legitimate succession in 
families even where election is omitted, as in the case of Solomon ; and, 
honestly to say it, many other difficulties of a like nature. In fact, 
upon the whole, this distinction might be drawn ; that although the Bible 
at large favours what we may, for shortness' sake, term Conservative 
politics, still it would not be easy to deduce from its page as code of 



412 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

rules, so necessarily of a social, temporary, and accidental nature ' 
The principle is given, but little of the practice ; the seed of true and 
undefiled religion produces among other good fruit what we will call 
Conservatism, but we must be very microscopic to detect that fruit in 
the seed : of this admission let my Liberal adversary make — as indeed 
he will — tlie most ; but let him remember that truth has always been 
most economically distributed. It is a material too costly to be broad- 
cast before swine ; and in slender evidence lurks more of moral test, 
than in stout arguments and open miracles. At any rate, as unfitted 
for the task, I leave it. For any thing mine un-book-learned ignorance 
can tell, the very title may be as old as Christianity itself; it is a good 
name, and a fair field. 

This manual was commenced in the form of familiar letters to a 
radical acquaintance, whom I had resolved to convert triumphantly ; but 
John Locke disarmed me, without, however, having gained a convert : 
he made me drop my weapon as Prospero with Ferdinand ; but the fault 
lay with Ferdinand, for want of equal power in the magic art. 



"Measures, not men" is, as we have hinted already, the ground- 
work of a true Tory's political creed ; and measures themselves only in 
so far as they expound and are consistent with principles. A man may 
fail ; the stoutest partisan become a renegade ; and the pet measure of a 
doughtiest champion may after all prove traitorous, unwise, unworthy : 
but principle is eternally an unerring guide, a master to whose words it 
is safe to swear, a leader whose flag is never lowered in compromise, 
nor sullied by defeat. Defalcations of the generally upright, derelic- 
tions of duty by the usually noble-minded, shake not that man's faitli 
which is founded on principle : for the cowardice, or rashness, or dis- 
honesty of some individual captain, he may feel shame, but never for the 
cause in which such hold commissions; he may often find much fault 
with soi-disant Tories, but never with the 'ism they profess. We over- 
step their follies; we disclaim their corruptions; we date above their 
faults ; we wash our hands of their abuses. An abstracted student in 
his chamber, building up his faith from the foundations, and trying every 
stone of the edifice, takes little heed of who is for him, and who against 
him, so Conscience is the architect, and the Master of the house looks on 
approving. A man's mind is but one whole; be it palace or hovel. 



WOMAN, A SUBJECT. 4I3 

feudal stronghold or Italian villa, it is all of a piece : a duly subordi- 
nated spirit bears no superstructure of the Radical, and the friable soil 
of discontented Liberalism, is too sandy a foundation for ponderous fanes 
of the religious. 

I rejoice in being accounted one of those unheroic, and therefore more 
useful, members of society, who profess to be by no means ambitious of 
reigning. A plain country gentleman, with a mind (thank Heaven!) 
well at ease, and things generally, both external and internal, being in 
his case consentaneous with happiness, would appear to have reached 
the acme of human felicity ; and no one but a fool cares, in any world, 
to exemplify the dog's preference for the shadow. Unenvious, therefore, 
of royalty, and fully crediting that never-quoted sentiment of Shaks- 
peare's "Uneasy," &c., my motto, within the legitimate limits of right 
reason, and in common with that of some ridiculed philosopher of 
Roundhead times, is the prudent saying, " Whoever 's king, I'll be 
subject!" — ay, and for the masculine I place the epicene. While, how- 
ever, in sober practice of right subordination, and under existing cir- 
cumstances of just rule, we gladly would amplify the maxim, (as in 
courtesy, gallantry, loyalty, and honest kind feeling strongly bound,) 
still in mere speculation, and irrespectively of things as they are, our 
abstract musings tended to approve the original word in its unextended 
gender. Every one of Edmund Burke's school would honour the 
ensign of Divine vice-regency wherever he found it; but, apart from 
this uninquisitive respect, he will claim to be reasonably patriotic, 
patriotically rational ; habit encourages to practice one thing, but theory 
may induce to think another. Now, little credence as so unenlightened 
so illiberal an integer as I give to an equalization in the rights of man, 
certainly on many accounts my blindness gives less to the rights of 
women with man, and very far less to those rights over man : it might 
be inconvenient to be specific as to reason ; but the working of an ultra- 
republican scheme, in which females should ballot as well as males, 
would briefly illustrate my meaning. Barbarism makes gentle woman 
our slave ; right civilization raises her into a loving helpmate ; but what 
kind of wisdom exalts her into mastery ? 

Readily, however, shall sleep in dull suppression sundry comments 
on a certain Rhenish law, whereof my author's mind had at one time 
studiously cogitated a grave and wholesome homily. For our censor of 
the press, one strait-laced Mr. Better Judgment, has, "with his abhorred 
shears," clipped off" the more eloquent and spirited portion of a trenchant 

35* 



414 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

argument concerning — the revealed doctrine of a superior sex, the social 
evils of female domination, church-headships considered as to type and 
antitype, improper influences, necessary hindrances, anomalous exam- 
ple, feminine infirmities, and an infinitude more such various objections 
springing out of this fertile subject. Thereafter might have come the 
historical view, evils and perils, for the majority of instances, following 
in the wake of such mastery. However, to leave these questionable 
matters quiescent, the principles of passive obedience mildly inter- 
pose, forbidding to stir the waters of commotion, although with healing 
objects, for the sake of an abstract theory ; there is ill-meant change 
enough afloat, without any call for well-intentioned meddlers to launch 
more. So, judicious after-thought resolves rather to strengthen too- 
much-weakened authority, in these ungovernable times, than attempt to 
prove its weaknesses inherent ; to look obstinately at the golden side only 
of the double-wielded shield : instead of picking away at a soft stone in 
constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to 
prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title 
of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds 
of more than the much that it means, to be without objection : neverthe- 
less, I did begin, and therefore, always under shelter of a domino, and 
protesting against any who would move my mask, I confess to 

WOMAN, A SUBJECT: 

it was a mere speculative argument ; a flock of fancies now roaming 
unregarded in some cloudy limbo. Let them fly into oblivion — " black, 
white, and gray, with all their trumpery." 



Notwithstanding these present hostile argumentations, politics are 
to me what they doubtless are to many others, subjects and disquisitions 
little short of hateful ; perpetual mulligatawney ; curried capsicums ; a 
very heating, unsatisfactory, unwholesome sort of food. How many 
pleasant dinner-parties have been abruptly broken up by the introduc- 
tion of this dish ! How many white waistcoats unblanched by projectile 
wine-glasses on account of this impetuous theme! How many little- 
civil wars produced from the pips of this apple of contention ! Yes, I 
hate it ; and for this cause, good readers, (who may chance to have been 
used scurvily, some six pages back, in respect of your opinions, honest 



FALSE STEPS. 



415 



as my own, though fixed in full hostility — and so, courteously be 
entreated for your pardons,) for this cause of hate, I beseech you to 
regard me as sacrificing my present inclination to my future quiet. 
We have heard of women marrying men they may detest, in order to 
get rid of them : even with such an object is here indited the last I ever 
intend to say about politics. The shadows of notions fixed upon this 
page will cease to haunt my brain ; and let no one doubt but that after 
relief from these pent-up humours, I shall walk forth less intolerant, 
less unamiable, less indignant than as heretofore. But, meanwhile, 
suffer with all brevity that I say out this small say, and deliver my 
patriotic conscience ; for many a head-ache has obfuscated your author's 
mind in consequence of other abortive bits of political common-place. 
Every successive measure of small triumphant Whiggery, every piece 
of what my view of the case would designate non-government or mis- 
government, has pinched, vexed, bruised, and stung my fervent coun- 
try's love day by day, session after session. Like thousands of others, 
I have been a greyhound in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take 
my turn on the arena : eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at 
negligence, peculation and injustice, and other the long black catalogue 
of British injuries. Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, 
China ; freed criminals, and imprisoned poverty ; penny wisdom, and 
pound folly ; the universal centralizing system, corrupting all generous 
individualities: patriotism ridiculed, and questionable loyalty patted 
on the back ; vice in full patronage, and virtue out of countenance ; 
Protestantism discouraged. Popery taken by the hand ; Dissent of any 
kind preferred to sober Orthodoxy; and, fitting climax, all this done 
under pretences of perfect wisdom, and most exquisite devotion to the 
crown and the constitution : — these things have made me too often sym- 
pathize in Colonel Crockett's humour, tiger-like, with a dash of the 
alligator. Accordingly let me not deny having once attempted a bitter 
diatribe, in petto, surnamed 

FALSE STEPS; 

BRITAIN'S HIGHROAD TO RUIN; 

a production of the pamphlet class, and, like its confraternity, destined 
at longest to the life ephemeral. But, to say truth, I found all that sort 
of thing done so much better, spicier, cleverer, in numberless newspaper 
articles, than my lack of the particular knowledge requisite, and my 

I 



416 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

little practice in controversy, could have managed, that I wisely drew in 
my horns, sheathed my toasting-iron, and decided upon not proceeding 
political pamphelteer, till, on awaking some fine morning, I find myself 
returned to parliament for an immaculate constituency. 

Patient reader, of whatever creed, do not hate me for my politics, nor 
despise the foolish candour of confession. Henceforth, I will not 
trouble you, but abjure the subject; except, indeed, my sturdy friend 
"the Squire," soon to be introduced to you, insists upon his after-dinner 
topic : but we will cut him short ; for, in fact, nothing can be more pro- 
voking, tedious, useless, and causative of ill-blood, than this perpetual 
intermeddling of private ignoramuses, like him and me, with matters 
they do not understand, nor can possibly ameliorate. 



A POET is born a poet, as all the world is well aware; and your 
thorough-paced lawyer is not less born a lawyer ; while the junction of 
these two most militant incompatibles clearly bears out the hackneyed 
quotation as above, with the final misfit, that is, ^^nonjit" Your poet- 
aster at the bar is that grotesque ideal, which Flaccus thought so funny 
that his friends must laugh; (although really, Romans, it is possible to 
contemplate a sort of sphinx figure, " a human head to a horse's neck," 
and so on, varied plumes and all, without much chance of a guffaw;) 
and yonder sickly-looking clerk, perched upon his high stool, penning 
"stanzas while he should engross," is the lugubrious caricature of Apollo 
on his Pegassus, with Helicon for inkstand. 

It may be nothing extraordinary that, jostled in so wide a theatre as 
ours of the world, chance-comers should not, at once or at all, comfort- 
ably find their proper places ; but that wise-looking chaperons, having 
with prospective caution duly taken a box, should by malice prepense 
thrust all the big people in front, and all the little folks behind, is rather 
hard upon the latter, and not a little foolish in itself. Even so in life : 
who does not wish a thousand times he could help some people to change 
places? Look at this long fellow, fit for Frederick of Prussia's regiment 
of giants : his parents and guardians have bent him double, broken his 
spirit, and spoiled his paces, by cramming him, a giraffe in the stable, 
between that frigate's gun-decks as a middy : while yonder martial little 
bantam, by dint of exaggerated heels, and exalted bear-skin, peeps about 
among his grenadiers, much as Brutus and Cassius did with their collossal 



KING'S EVIDENCE. 4I7 

Ci.x3sar. So also of minds : look at brilliant Burns, the exciseman ; and 
quaintly versatile Lamb, the common city clerk : Look at — had you 
only patience, you should have examoles by the gross ; but, to make a 
shorter tale of it, (I presume this shows the etymology of cur-tail,) just 
think over the pack of your acquaintance, and see if you could not 
shuffle those kings, queens — yes, and knaves too — more to your satis- 
faction, and their own advantage: at least, so most folks imagine, silly 
meddlers as they are; for, after all, what with human versatility, and 
the fact of a probationary state, and the influence of habit, and the 
drudging example set by others, things work so kindly as they are, that, 
notwithstanding misfits, the wiser few must be of Pope's mind, "what- 
ever is, is right;" — ay, that it is. 

A year or two ago — if your author is little better than one of the 
foolish now, what in charity must he have been then ? — 1 took it upon 
me to indite an innocent, stingless satire, whereof for samples take the 
following. Skip them one and all ; you will, if you are wise, for they 
bear the ban of rhyme, are peevish, dull, ill-reasoned ; but if you are 
not wise, (and, strange to say, malicious people tell me there are 
many such,) you may wish to see in print a metred inconclusive 
grumble. Take it, then, if you will, as I do, merely for a change ; at 
any rate, your manciple has furnished this buttery of yours with ample 
choice of viands ; and omnivoracious as man may be — gormandizing, 
with gusto, fat moths in Australia, cockchafers at Florence, frogs in 
France, and snails in Switzerland, equally as all less objectionable 
meats, drinks, fruits, roots, composites, and simples — still, in reason, no 
one can be expected or expect himself to like every thing: have charity, 
for what suits not one man's taste may please the palate of another; so 
hear me complacently turn 

"KING'S EVIDENCE," 

and give heed to certain confessions, extorted under the peine forte el dure 
of a whilom state legal. Yet, when I come to consider of this, {miki cogi- 
hmti, as school themes invariably commenced,) it strikes my memory that 
.ill confessions, short of the last dying one, are weak and foolish imper- 
tinences; whether Jean Jacques or Mr. Adams thought so, or caused 
others to think so, are separate topics beside the question : for myself, I 
will spare you a satire dotted with as many I 's as an Argus pheasant ; 
and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome contributions, 
will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's cast-ofF mistress, the 
Bb 



418 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

Law. One word more though : undoubting of thine amiability, friend that 
hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be tame as a purring cat, 
and sheathe my talons ; therefore are you still unteased by divers sly 
speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning innumerable black sheep 
that crowd about a woolsack ; especially of certain " highly respecta- 
bles," whom the omnipotence of parliament (no less power presumably 
being competent) commands to be accounted "gentlemen." Should then 
my meagre sketches seem but little spiteful, accord me credit for tole- 
rance at the expense of wit, (yea, in mine own garbled satire, hear it 
Juvenal !) and view them kindly in the same light as you would sundry 
emasculated extracts from a discreet Family Shakspeare. Indignation 
ever speaks in short sharp queries ; and it is well for the printer's 
Docket that the self-experience hereof was considered inadmissible, for 
a new fount of notes of interrogation must have been procured : as it is, 
we are sailing quietly on the Didactic Ocean, and have, I fear, been 
engaged some time upon topics actionable on a charge of scandaluin 
magnatum. Hereof then just a little sample: let us call it M Judg- 
ment in the Rolls Court ;' or in any other ; I care not. 

Pkecedent's slave, this mountebank decides 

As great Authority, not Reason, guides. 

" 'Tis not for him, degenerate wight, to say 

Fauhs can be mended at this time of day. 

For Coke himself declared — no matter what — 

Can Justice suffer what Lord Coke would not? 

And if 1 Siderfin, p. 10, you scan. 

Lord Hoax has fixed the rule, that learned man: 

I cannot, dare not, if I would, be just, 

My hands are tied, and follow Hoax I must ; 

That very learned Lord could not be wrong. 

Besides, in fact, it has been settled long. 

For the great case of Hitchcock versus Bundy 

Decided — (Cro. Eliz. per Justice Grundy), 

That [black was white] ; — and so, what can I say? 

Landmarks are things must not be moved away: 

I cannot put the clock of Wisdom back, 

And solemnly pronounce that black is black. 

Though plaintiff has the right, I grant it clear, 

I must be ruled by Hoax and Hitchcock here : 

Equity follows, does not mend the laws : 

Therefore declare, defendant gains the cause." 

Then, as virtuously bound, Indignation interrogates sundry ejecula- 



POETICS, A MELANGE. 419 

tions; or, if you like it better, ejaculates sundry interrogations: as thus, 
take a brace : 

If right and reason both combine in one. 
Why, in God's name, should justice not be done 1 
If law be not a lie, and judgments jokes. 
Why not be just, and cut adrift Lord Hoax? 

After a vast deal more in this vein of literature — for you perceive 
my present purpose is dissection in part of this ancient rhyme — we 
arrive at a magnanimous — 

No ! Right shall have his own, put ofl' no longer 
By rule of Former, or by whim of Stronger ; 
Nor, because Jack goes tumbling down the hill, 
Shall precedent create a tumbling Jill. 
Public opinion soon shall change the scene. 
And wash the Law's Augaean stable clean ; 
Sweep out the Temple, drive the sellers thence. 
And lead, in novel triumph, Common Sense. 

Verily, this is of the dullest, but it is brief: endure it, and pray you 
consider the deadliness of the topic, and the barbarous cruelty where- 
with courtesy has clipped the wings of my poor spite. Let us turn to 
other title-pages ; assuring all the world that no specific mountebank has 
been here intended, and that nothing more is meant than a nerveless 
blow against legal cant, quainter than Quarles's, and against that well- 
known species of Equity, which must have been so titled from like 
antiquated reasons with those that induced Numa and his company to 
call a dark grove, lucus. 



How many foes, in this utilitarian era, has that very unwarrantable 
vice, called Poetry! All who despise love and love-making, all who 
prefer billiards to meditation, all who value hard cash above mental 
riches, feel privileged to hate it ; while really, typographers, the illegible 
diamond print in which you generally set it up, whether in book, or 
newspaper, or handbill, or magazine, induces many an indifferent 
peruser to skip the poem for the sake of his eye-sight. I presume that 
the monosyllable, rhyme, comprehends pretty nearly all that the world 
ct large intends by poetry; and, in the same manner as certain critics 
have sneered at Livy — no, it was Tacitus — for commencing his work 



420 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

with a bad hexameter, so many a reader will now-a-days condemn 
a whole book, because it is somewhere found guilty of harbouring 
a distich. But poetry, friend World, means far other than rhyme ; its 
etymology would yield "creation," or "fabrication," of sense as well as 
sound, and of melody for the eye as well as melody for the ear. So 

did [epoiese] Milton; and so did not Well, I myself, if you will. 

Yet, in fact, there are fifty other kinds of poetries, beside the poetry of 
words : as the poetry of life — affection, honour, and hope, and generosity ; 
the poetry of beauty — never mind what features decorate the Dulcinea, 
for this species of poetry is felt and seen almost only in first love; the 
poetry of motion, as first-rates majestically sailing, furiously scudding 
waves, bending corn-fields, and, briefly, all things moveable but railway- 
trains; the poetry of rest, as pyramids, a tropical calm, an arctic winter, 
and generally all things quiescent but a slumbering alderman; the 
poetry of music, heard oftener in a country milkmaid's evening song, 
than in many a concert-room ; the poetry of elegance, more natural to 
weeping willows, unbroken colts, flames, swans, ivy-clad arches, grey- 
hounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those virouette-mg and very 
active danseuses of the opera; the poetry of nature, as mountains, 
waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all manner of landscapes, 
except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art, acqueducts, minarets, 
Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate designs; the poetry of 
ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers ; and the poetry of 
awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr. trans-Atlantic 
nice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of impudence 
(for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose, (for which 
see Addison) ; of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace : for it is an 
easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of doing as of 
saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to its bravest 
advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will save her 
from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your innu- 
mcrous dull lyrics — ay, and mine — your unnatural heroics — I too have 
sinned thus — your up-hill sonnets — that labour of folly have I known as 
well — in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the 
cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it : as 
an average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up 
a paper or a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great 
names; the age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; 
f.t:d truly may we consider that the very abundance of good versifica- 



POETICS, A MELANGE. 421 

tion has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing 
world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have 
been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any 
now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anony- 
mous minstrels, with whom the greater number of the so-called old 
English poets could not with advantage to the ancients justly be com- 
pared. Look at ' Johnson's Lives.'' Who can read the book, and the 
specimens it glorifies, without rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly 
despising their poetry? — With a iew brilliant exceptions, of course, (for 
ill-used Milton, Pope — and shall we in the same sentence put Dryden? 
— are there,) a more wretched set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed 
mob-trodden Parnassus. The poetry of Queen Anne's time and there- 
abouts, I judge to have been at the lo\v^st bathos of badness; all satyrs, 
and swains, fulsome flattery of titles, and foolish adoration of painted 
shepherdesses : poor weak hobbling lines, eked out by 'eds and expletives, 
often terminated by false rhymes, and made lamer by triplets and dreary 
Alexandrines; ill-selected subjects, laboured, indelicate, or impossible 
similes, passions frigid as Diana, wit's weapons dull as lead. Yet these 
(many exceptions doubtless there were, and many redeeming morceaux 
even in the worst, charitable reader, but as of the rule we speak not 
falsely), these are the poets of England, the men our great grandfathers 
delighted to honour, the feared, the praised, the pensioned, and those 
whom we their children still denominate — the poets ! Praise, praise 
your stars, ye lucky imps of Fame! who could tolerate you now-a- 
days? — You lived in golden times, when Dorset, Harley, Bolingbroke, 
Halifax, and Company, gave away places of a thousand a-year, as but 
justly due to any man who could pen a roaring song, fabricate- a ful- 
some sonnet, or bewail in meagre elegiacs the still-resisting virtue of 
some persecuted Stella! Happy fellows, easy conquisitors of wealth 
and fame, autocrats of coffee-houses, fdted and favoured by town-bred 
dames ! In those good old times for the fashionable Nine, an epic was 
sure to lead to a Ministry. of-State, and even an epigram produced its 
pension : to be a poet, or reputed so, was to be — eligible for all 
things ; and the fortunate possessor of a rhyming dictionary might have 
governed Europe with his metrical protocols. But these halcyon times 
are of the past — and so, verily, are their heroes. Farewell, a long fare- 
well, children of oblivion ! farewell, Spratt, Smith, Duke, Hughes, King, 
Pomfret, Phillips, and Blackmore : ye who, in that day of very small 
things, just rose, as your Leviathan biographer so often testifies, "to a 

36 



422 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

degree of merit above mediocrity:" ye who — but (Candor and good 
Charity, I thank you for the hint,) limited indeed is my knowledge of 
your writings, ye long-departed poets, whom I thus am base enough lo 
pilfer of your bays; and therefore, if any man among you penned 
aught of equal praise with "M?/ Mind to me a Kingdom is,^' or "iVio 
Glory I covet, no Riches I want," humbly do I cry that good man's par- 
don. Believe that I have only seen the chateau of your fame, but never 
the rock on which it rested ; and therefore candidly consider, if I might 
not with reason have accounted it a castle in the air? 

Now, after this wholesale species of poetical massacre, this rifling of 
old Etruscan tombs of their honourable spoil, a very pleasant ninny 
would that poetaster stand forth, whose inanely conceited daring exhib- 
ited specimens from his own mint, as medals in fit contrast with those 
slandered "things of base alloy." No, as with politics, so with poetry; 
in public I abjure and do renounce the minx : and although privately my 
author's mind is so silly as to doat right lovingly ori such an ancient mis- 
tress, and has wasted much time and paper in her praise or service, still 
that mind is sufficiently self-possessed in worldly prudence, as to set 
seemingly little store on the worth of an acquaintance so little in the 
fashion. Therefore I disown and disclaim 

A VOLUME OF POETICS, 

ill-fated offspring of a foolish father; miscellaneous collection of occa- 
sionals and fugitives, longer or shorter, as the army of Bombastes. 
Poetical as in verity I must confess to have been, (using the word 
"poetical" as most men use it, and the words "have been" in the sense 
of Troy's existence,) there must have lingered in me, even at that hal- 
lucinating pei'iod, some little remnant of prosaic wisdom ; for it is now 
long since that I consigned to the most voracious of elements all the 
more love-sick rhythmicals, and all the more hateful satiricals. Now, 
I will maintain that act of incremation to be one of true heroism, nearly 
equal to the judgment of Brutus ; nor less is it matter of righteous boast- 
ing to have immolated (warned by Charles Lamb's ghost) divers albu- 
minous preparations, which to have to do, were, Clio knows, little 
pleasure, and to have done, we all know, as little praise. Such light 
follies are like skeins of cotton, or adjectives, or babies, unfit to stand 
alone; haply, well enough, times and things considered, but totally 
unworthy to be dragged out of their contexts into the imperishability of 
print; it is to take flies out of treacle, and embalm them in clear amber. 



HUMORISTICS, A MELANGE. 



423 



As to sonnets, what real author's mind will not, if honest, confess to 
the almost daily recurrence of that symptom of his disease? With 
mine, at least, they have increased, and are increasing ; yea, more — as 
a certain statesman suggested of Ireland's multitudinous pisantry, or as 
tavern patriots declare of the power of the crown — they ought to be 
diminished. Nevertheless, resolutely do I hope that some of these at 
least are little worthy of the days of good Queen Anne. 

In matters of the sacred muse, lengthily as others have I trespassed 
heretofore; the most protracted fytle, however, made a respectable 
inroad on a new metrical version of the ' Psalms,'' attempting at any 
rate closer accuracy from the Hebrew than Brady's, and juster rhymes 
than Sternhold's : but this has since been better done by another bard. 
On the whole budget of exploded poeticals is now legibly inscribed "to 
be kept till called for," a period rather more indefinite than the promise 
of a spendthrift's payment. Let them rest in peace, those unfor- 
tunate poetics ! 

There are also in the bundle, if I rightly do remember me, sundry 
metricals of the humorous sort, which may be considered as really waste- 
failures as any tainted hams that ever were yclept Westph alias. For 
of all dreary and lugubrious perpetrations in print, nothing can be more 
desolate than laboured witticism. A pun is a momentary spark dropt 
upon the tinder-box of social intercourse ; and to detach such a sentence 
from its producing circumstances, is about as efRcacious a method of 
producing laughter, as the scintillatory flint and steel struck upon wet 
grass would be of generating light. Few things are less digestible than 
abortive efforts at the humorous ; the stream of conversation instantly 
freezes up ; the disconcerted punster wears the look of his well-known 
kinsman, the detected pickpocket ; and a scribe, so mercilessly suicidal 
as regards his better fame, deserves, when a plain blunt jury comes to 
sit upon the body, to be found in mystical Latin, ye/o de se, or in plain 
English "a fellow deceased." 

"There shall come in the last days, scoffers;" those same last days 
in which " many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 
It is true that these phrases (quoted with the deepest reverence, though 
found in lighter company) are forcibly taken from their context; but 
still, the judgment of many wise among us will agree that they present 
a remarkable coincidence : in this view of the case, and it is a most 
serious one, the concurrent notoriety of humour having just arisen like 
a phoenix from its ashes, of railroads and steamboats having partially 



424 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

* 

annihilated space, and of the strides which education, if not intellect, has 
made upon the highroad of human improvement, assumes an importance 
o-reater than the things themselves deserve. To a truly philosophic ken, 
there is no such thing as a trifle ; the ridiculous is but skin-deep, papillse 
on the surface of society ; cut a little deeper, you will find the veins 
and arteries of wisdom. Therefore will a sober man not deride the 
notion that comic almanacs, comic Latin grammars, comic hand-books 
of sciences and arts, and the great prevalence of comicality in popular 
views taken of life and of death, of incident and of character, of evil 
and of good, are, in reality, signs of the times. These straws, so thick 
upon the wind, and so injuriously mote-like to the visual organs, are 
flying forward before a storm. As symptoms of changing nationality, 
and of a disposition to make fun of all things ancient and honourable, 
and wise, and mighty, and religious, they serve to evidence a state of 
the universal mind degenerated and diseased. Still, let us not be too 
severe ; and, as to individual confessions, let not me play the hypocrite. 
Like every thing else, good in its good use, and evil only in abuse of 
its -excesses, humour is capable of filling, and has filled, no lightly-esti- 
mable part in the comedy of temporal happiness. What a good thing it 
is to raise an innocent and cheerful laugh; to inoculate moroseness 
with hearty merriment; to hunt away misbelieving care, if not with 
better prayers, at the lowest with a pack of yelping cachinations ; to 
make pain forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth ! Truly, 
humour has its laudable and kindly uses : it is the mind's play-time after 
office-drudgery — an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. 
Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more than 
a temporary alleviation ; when it affects to set up as an atheistic panacea; 
when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you on your 
way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful figure in Dante, who lan- 
terns his path by the glaring eyes of his own truncated head); and 
when it ceases to become merely the casual scintillation, the flitting 
ignus fatuus of a summer evening — then only is wit to be condemned. 
Often, for mine own poor part in this most mirthful age, have 1 had 

HEARTY LAIJUnS, 

IN PROSE AND VERSE; 

but take no thought of preserving their echoes, or of shrining them in 
the eternal basalt of print, like to the oft-repeated cries of Lurley's 



JOURNALS, A DECADE. 425 

hunted in-dweller. The humorous infection caught also me, as a thing 
inevitable ; but the case, I wot, proved an unfavourable one : and who 
dare enter the arena of contention with these mighty men of Momus, 
these acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some 
fifty more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, 
Ingoldsby, and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention 
— (but that artists are authors) — laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian 
Phiz, and inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender con- 
science penitently ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in 
rendering the age more careless than perchance, but for such ministra- 
tions, it would cease to be? Is it quite wise in a writer, by following in 
that wake, to be reputed at once to help in doing harm, and help to do 
harm to his own reputation ? There are professors enough in this quad- 
rangle of the college of amusement, popular and extant in flourishing 
obesity, without so dull a volunteer as Mr. Self intruding his humours 
on the world : and surely the far-echoing voices of a couple of cannons, 
thundering their mirth throughout Europe from the jolly quarters of St. 
Paul's, may well frighten into silence a poor solitary pop-gun, which, as 
the frog with the bull, might burst in an attempt at competition, or, like 
Bottom's Numidian lion, could imitate the mighty roar only as gently as 
your sucking-dove. 



Grapho-mania, or the love of scribbling, is clearly the great distin- 
guishing characteristic of an author's mind ; pen and ink are to it, 
what bread and butter are to its lodging-house the body : observe, we 
do not hazard a remark so false as that the one produces the other — their 
relations are far from being mutual ; but we only suggest that the mind, 
as well as the body, hobbles like a three-legged CEdipus, resting on its 
proper staff of life. And what can be more provocative of scribbling 
than travel ? How eagerly we hasten to describe unheard-of adventures, 
how anxiously record exaggerated marvels! to prove some printed 
hand-book quite wrong in the number of steps up a round-tower : or to 
crush, as a wicked vender of execrable wines, the once fair fame of 
some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how pleasant to immor- 
talize the holiday, and read in after-years the story of that happy trip 
langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of friends, that must 
stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and to taste the dulcet 

36* 



426 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

joys of those first essays at authorship. A great charm is there in 
jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the mountains and 
museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters that have 
made it memorable: moreover, for fixing scenery on the mental retina, 
as well as for comparison of notes as to an alibi, for duly remembering 
things heard and seen, as well as for being humbled in having (as a 
matter inevitable) left unseen just the best lion of the whole tour, jour- 
nals are a most praise-worthy pastime, and usually rank among the 
earliest efforts of an embryo author's mind. 

It is a thing of commonest course, that, in this age of inveterate loco- 
motion, your pi'esent humble friend, now talking in this candid fashion 
with your readership, has been every where, seen every thing, and done 
his touristic devoirs like every body else about him: also, as a like cir- 
cumstance of etymological triviality, that he has severally, and from 
time to time, recorded for self-amusement and the edification of others 
all such matters as holiday-making school-boys and boarding-misses, 
and government-clerks in their swift-speeding vacation, and elderly gen- 
tlemen vainly striving to enjoy their first fretful continental trip, usually 
think proper to descant upon. Of such manuscripts the world is clearly 
full; no catacomb of mummies more fertile of papyri; no traveller so 
poor but he has by him a packet of precious notes, whereon he sets 
much store : every tourist thinks he can reasonably emulate clever 
Basil Hall, in his eloquent fragments of voyages and travels; and I, 
for my part, a truth-teller to my own detriment, am ashamed to confess 
the existence of 

A DECADE OF JOURNALS; 

which of olden time my cacoethes produced as regularly as recurred the 
summer solstice. Unlike that of Livy's, I am satisfied that this poor 
Decade be irrevocably lost; but, for dear recollection's sake of days 
gone by, intend it at least to be spared from malicious incremation. 
Records of roamings in romantic youth, witnesses of wayward wayside 
wanderings, gayly with alliterative titles might your contents, a la Ros- 
coe, be set forth. But — what conceivable news can be told at this time 
of day about the trampled Continent, and the crowded British isles? 
Had my luck led me to Lapland or Formosa, to Mexico or Timbuctoo, 
to the top of Egyptian pyramids or the bottom of Polish salt-mines, my 
authorship would long since have publicly declared, in common witli 
many a monkey, that it had "seen the world." As things are, to Bruce, 



LAY HINTS. 427 

Buckingham, Belzoni, and that glorious anomaly, the blind brave Hol- 
man, let us leave the harvest of praise, worthy to be reaped as their 
own by modern travellers. 



More, yet more, most exemplary of listeners ; and a web or webs of 
very various texture. Let any man tell truths of himself, and seem to 
be consistent, if he can. From grave to gay, from simple to severe, is 
the line most expressive of such foolish versatility as mine; varium el 
mutahile semper, to one thing constant never. I have heard, or read, 
among the experiences of a popular preacher, that one of his most vex- 
atious petty temptations, was the rise of humorous notions in his mind the 
moment he stepped into the pulpit ; and it is well known that many a 
comic actor has been afflicted with the blackest melancholy while sup- 
porting right facetiously his best, because most ludicrous character. 
Let such thoughts then as these, of the frailties incident to man, serve 
to excuse the present juxtaposition of fancies in themselves diametri- 
cally opposite. 

It is proper to preamble somewhat of apology before announcing the 
next presumptuous tractate ; presumptuous, because affecting to advise 
some thousands of men whose office alike and average character are 
sacred, and just, and excellent. Why then intrude such unrequired 
counsel ? Read the next five pages, and take your answer. Zealously 
inflamed for the cause of truth, if not also charitably wroth against 
sundry lukewarm cumber-earth incumbents, and certainly more in love 
with the Church-of-England prayer-book than with her no-ways-exten- 
uated evils of omission or commission, I wrote, not long since, [and 
truly, not long since, for few things in this book can boast of higher 
antiquity than a most modern existence, some things being the birth of 
an hour, some of a day, a week, or a month ; and not more than one or 
two above a twelve month's age. — Alas, for Horace's forgotten counsels ! 
— alas, for Pope's and Boileau's reiterated prescription of revisal for — 
morhleu et parbleu — nine years!] I wrote then a good cantle of an 
essay addressed to the clergy on some matters of judicious ameliora- 
tion, which we will call, if you please — and if the word hints be not 
objectionable — 

LAY HINTS. 

Now, as to the unclerical authorship of this, it is wise that it be done 
out of metier. Laymen are more likely to gain attention in these mat- 



428 • AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

ters, from the very fact of their influence being an indirect one, speaking 
as they do rather from the social arm-chair, the high-stool of the count- 
ing-house, or the benches of whilom St. Stephen's, than ex cathedra as 
of office and of duty. 

It would be a fair exemplification of the stolid prowess of a Quixote 
tilting against, yea, stouter foes than wind-mills, were I to have com- 
menced with an attack upon external church architecture : this topic let 
us leave to the fraternity of builders; only asking by what rule of 
taste an obelisk-like spire, is so often stuck upon the roof of a Grecian 
temple, and by what rule of convenience gigantic columns so commonly 
and resolutely sentinel the narrowest of exits and entrances. Let us 
be more commonly contented, as well we may, with our grand, appro- 
priate, and impressive indigenous kind of architecture — Gothic, Norman, 
and Saxon : the temple of Ephesus was not suitable to be fitted up with 
galleries, nor was the Parthenon meant to be surmounted by a steeple. 
But all this is useless gossip. 

Similarly Quixotic would be any tirade against pews, those pet strong- 
holds of snug exclusive selfishness; bad in principle, as perpetually 
separating within wooden walls members of the same communion ; 
unwholesome in practice, confining in those antre-like parallelograms 
the close-pent air; unsightly in appearance, as any one will testify, 
whose soul is exalted above the iron beauties of a plain conventicle ; 
expensive in their original formation, their fittings and repairs; and, 
when finished, occupying perhaps one-fourth of the area of a church 
already ten times too small for its neighbouring population. Fixed 
benches, or a strong muster of chairs, or such modes of congregational 
accommodation as public meeting-rooms and ordinary lecture-rooms 
present, seems to me more consistent and more convenient. But all this 
again is vain talking — a very empty expenditure of words ; we must 
be satisfied with churches as they are ; and, after all, let me readily 
admit that steeples are imposing in the distance, and of use as belfries; 
(probably of like intent were the strange columnar towers of Ireland;) 
and with regard to pews, let me confess that practice finds perfect what 
theory condemns as wrong, so — let these things pass. 

Nevertheless, let me begin upon the threshold with the extortionate 
and abominable race of pew-women, beadles, clerks, vergers, bell-ring- 
ers, and other fee-hungry ravens hovering around and about almost 
every hallowed precinct : pray you, reform all that, and copy railroad 
companies in forbidding those begrudged gratuities to mendicant and 



LAY HINTS, AN APPEAL. 439 

ever-grumbling menials. Next, give more sublunary heed, we beseech 
you, to the comforts or discomforts incidental to doors, vi'indows, stoves, 
paint, dust, dirt, and general ventilation ; consider the cold, fevers, lum- 
bagos, rheums, life-long aches, and fatal pains too often caught help- 
lessly and needlessly by the devout worshipper in a town or country 
church. Look to your organist, that he wot something of the value of 
time and the mysteries of tune; or, if a country parson, drill cleverly 
that insubordinate phalanx of soi-disant musicians, a rustic orchestra; 
and exclude from the latter, at all mortal hazards, the huntsman's horn, 
the volunteer fiddle, and the shrill squeaking of the wry-necked pipe. 
Much is being now done for congregational psalmody ; but when will 
country folks give up their murderous execution of the fugue-full 
anthem, and when will London congregations understand that the sing- 
ing-psalms are not set apart exclusively for charity-children? When 
shall Bishop Kenn's 'Awake my soul,^ cease to be our noonday exhorta- 
tion ; and a literal invocation for sweet sleep to close our eye-lids no 
longer be the ill-considered prelude to an afternoon discourse ? Take 
some trouble to improve and educate, or get rid of, if possible, your 
generally vulgar, illiterate, ill-conditioned clerk ; insist upon his v's and 
h's : let him shut up his shoe-stall ; and raise in the scale of society one 
of the leaders of its worship : as, at present, these stagnant, recreant, 
ignorant clerks are sad stumbling-blocks ; no help to the congregation, 
and a nuisance to its minister. In reading — suffer this foolishness, my 
masters — fight against the too frequent style of dogged, dormant, dull 
formality ; we take you for earnest living guides to our devotion, not 
mere dead organs of an oft-repeated service ; quicken us by your man- 
ner; a psalm so spoken is better than the sermon. In more fitting 
places has your author long ago delivered his mind concerning matters 
of a character more directly sacred than shall here find room ; as, the 
sacrament with its holy mysteries, and the many things amendable in 
ordinary preachments ; but for these my unseasonable Wisdom shrouds 
itself in Silence : therefore, to do away with details, and apply a general 
rule, above all things, and in all things, strive by judicious acquiescence 
with human wants, and likings, and failings too, if conscientiously you 
can, as well as by spirited and true devotion, to break down the sluggish 
mounds of needful uniformity, and to build up round the church a ram- 
part of good sense : and so. Heaven bless your labours ! A word more : 
if it be possible, take no fees at a baptism, and let it not be thought, 
by either rich or poor, that an entrance into Christ's fold must be paid 



430 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

for ; no, nor at a burial ; but let the service for the Christian dead be 
accorded freely, without money and without price. To a wedding, the 
same ideas are not perhaps so closely applicable ; therefore we will gen- 
erously suffer that you keep your customs there ; but on the introduction 
of a little one to the bosom of the church, or restoring the body of a 
saint to Him who made it of the dust, nothing can be more repulsive to 
right religious feelings than to be bothered by a fee-seeking clerk, 
thrusting in your face an itching palm : to the poor, these things are 
more than a mere annoyance ; they amount to a hardship and a hin- 
drance ; for such demands at such seasons are often nothing less than a 
bitter extortion upon the self-denial of conscientious duty. 

More might be added; but enough, too miich has been alluded to. 
Nothing would strengthen the bulwarks of our Zion more than such 
easy reforms as these : recent happy revivals in our church would thus 
be more solidified ; and where, as now, many have been lulled to slumber, 
many grieved, many become disgusted or Dissenters, our sons and our 
daughters would grow up as the polished corners of the temple, and 
crowds would throng the courts of our holy and beautiful House. 

Suffer thus far, clerical and lay, these crude hints : in all things have 
I studied brevity, throughout this little bookful ; therefore are you spared 
a perusal of my reasons, and so be indulgent for their absence. I 
"touch your ears" but lightly; be you for charity, as in old Rome, my 
favourable witnesses. 



My before-mentioned Censor of the press had a very considerable 
mind to dock all mention of the following intended brochure. But I 
answered, Really, Mr. Judgment, (better or worse, as occasion may 
register your Agnomen,) you must not weigh trifles in gold-assaying 
scales ; be not so particular as to the polish of a thumb-nail ; endure a 
little incoherent pastime; count not the several stems of hay, straw, 
stubble — but suffer them to be pitch-forked en masse, and unconsidered : 
it is their privilege, in common with that of certain others — lightnesses 
that froth upon the surface of society. Moreover, let me remind your 
worship's classicality that no one of mortals is sapient at all times. 
Item, that if friend Flaccus be not a calumniator, even the rigid virtue 
of the antiquer Cato delighted in so stimulant a vanity as wine hot. So 
give the colt his head, and let it go : remembering always that this same 
colt, as straying without a responsible rider, is indeed liable to be 



ANTI-XURION, A CRUSADE. 431 

impounded by any who can catch him ; but still, if he be found to have 
done great damage to his master's character, or to a neighbour's fences, 
the estray shall rather be abandoned than acknowledged. Let then this 
unequal work, this ill-assorted bundle of dry book-plants, this undirected 
parcel of literary stuff, be accounted much in the same situation as that 
of the wanton caitiff-colt, so likely to bait a-pound, and afterwards to be 
sold for payment of expenses, in true bailiff-sense of justice. And let 
thus much serve as discursive prolegomena to a notion, scarcely worth 
recording, but for the wonder, that no professed writer (at least to my 
small knowledge) has entered on so common-sense a field. Paris, I 
remember, some years ago was inundated with copies of a treatise on 
the important art of tying the cravat ; every shop-window displayed the 
mystic diagrams, and every stiff neck proclaimed its popularity. This 
was my yesterday's-conceived precedent for entertaining the bright hope 
of illuminating London on the subject of shaving : 

ANTI-XURION; 

A CRUSADE AGAINST RAZORS, 

should have been my taking title ; and perchance the learned treatise 
might have been characteristically illustrated with steel cuts. Shaving 
is a wider topic than most people think for ; it is a species of insanity 
that has afflicted man in all ages, deprived him of nature's best adorn- 
ment in every country under heaven. So contradictorily too ; as thus : 
the Spanish friar shaves all but a rim round his head, which rim alone 
sundry North American aborigines determine to extirpate ; John China- 
man nourishes exclusively a long cue, just on that saipe inch of crown- 
land which the P. P. sedulously keeps as bare as his palm : all the 
Orientals shave the head, and cherish the beard; all the Occidentals 
immolate the beard, and leave the honours of the head untouched. 
Then, again, the strange successive fashions in this same unnatural, 
unneedful depilation ; look at the vagaries of young France : not to 
descend also to savage men, and their clumsy shell-scrapings ; and to 
devote but little time to the voluminous topic of wigs, male and female, 
cavalier and caxon, Marlborough and monstrous maccaroni — from the 
plaited Absalom-looking periwig of a Pharaoh in the British Museum, 
to Truefitt's last patent self-adjuster. Of all these follies, and their root 
a razor, might we show the manifest absurdity : we might argue upon 
Eastern stupidity as caused by thickness of the skull, such thickness 



432 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

being the substitute for thatchy hair suggested by kind ill-used Nature 
as the hot brain's best protection : we might reason upon the average 
sheepishness of this peaceful West, as due to having shorn the lion of 
his mane, Phoebus of his glory, man of his majestic beard. Then the 
martyrdom it is to many! who stoically, day after day, persist in 
scratching to the quick their irritable chins, and after all to little better 
end than the diligent earning of tooth-aches, ear-aches, colds, sore 
throats, and unbecoming blank faces. Habit, it is true, makes us deem 
that a comfort, and our better halves (or those we would fain have so) 
think that a beauty, which our forerunners of old time would have held 
a plague, a disgrace, a deformity, a mortification : prisoned paupers in 
the Union think it an insufferable hardship to go bearded, and King 
David's ambassadors would have given their right eyes not to have been 
shaved; so much are we the slaves of custom: Sheffield also, it is 
equally true, is a town that humane men would not wish to ruin ; by 
razors they of Sheffield live, and shaving is their substance. But, as in 
the case of the smoother and softer sex, we are convinced that the wand 
of fashion would presently convert their heterodox anti-barbal prejudices : 
so, in the case of harder-ware Sheffield, while we hope to live to see 
razors regarded as antiquarian rarities, (even as a watchman's rattle, or 
the many-caped coats of the semi-extinct class Welleria coaclimanensis 
are now some time become,) still we desire all possible multiplication 
to the tribe of trimming scissors. Like Ireland, we shout for long- 
denied justice ; give us our beards. That reasonable indulgence shall 
never be abused ; our Catholic emancipation of moustache and impe- 
rial, whisker and the rest, shall not be a pretence for lion's manes, or 
the fringe of goats and monkeys: we would not so far follow unsophis- 
ticated nature as to relapse into barbarous wild men; but diligently 
squaring, pointing, combing, and perfuming those natural manly deco- 
rations, after the most approved modes of Raleigh, Walsingham, and 
Shakspeare, and heroical Edward the Black Prince, and venerable apos- 
tolic Bede, we will encroach little further than to discard our comfort- 
less starched collars and strangling stocks, to adopt once more in lieu 
thereof open necks and vandyke borders. 

Of course, (here, priest-like, we take our ell,) there must follow upon 
this a grand and glorious revolution in male attire. This present close- 
fitting, undignified set of habiliments, which no chisel dare imitate — this 
cumbersome, unbecoming garb — might, should, ought to be, and would 
be, superseded by slashed gay jerkins, and picturesque nether garments: 



ANTI-XURION, A CRUSADE. 433 

cap and feather throwing into shade the modern hat, ugliest of all 
imaginable head-di'esses ; and in lieu of the smock-frock Macintosh, 
or coarse-featured bear-skin, Ciceronian mantles flowing from the 
shoulders, or lighter capes of the elegant olden-time Venitian. By way 
of distinguisihng the now confused classes of society, my radical reform 
in dress would go to recommend that nobles and gentry wear their own 
heraldic colours and livery buttons ; and humbler domesticated creatures 
walk, as modest gentlefolks do now, in what sundry have presumed to 
call "Mufti." To be briefer; in dress, if nothing more, let us sensibly 
retrograde to the days of good Queen Bess : I will not say, copy a Sir 
Piercie Shafton, who boasts of having "danced the salvage man at the 
mummery of Clerkenwell, in a suit of flesh-coloured silk, trimmed with 
fur;" neither, under these dingy skies, would I care to walk abroad with 
Sir Philip Sidney in satin boots, or with Oliver Goldsmith in a peach- 
coloured doublet: but still, for very comfort's sake, let us break our 
bonds of cloth and buckram, and, in so far as adornment is concerned, 
let us exchange this staid funeral monotony for the gallant garb of our 
ancestors, the brave costumes of our Edwards and the blufl" King Hal. 

Behold, too scornful friend, how my Tory rabies reaches to the 
wardrobe. The modern dress of illuminated Europe has, in my humble 
opinion, gone far to weaken the old empire of the Porte, to denationalize 
Egypt, to degenerate the Jews, to mammonize once generous Greece, 
and carry republican equality into the great prairies of America : it is 
the undistinguishing, humiliating, unchivalrous livery of our cold cos- 
mopolites. But enough of this : pews and spires are to my Quixotism 
not more unextinguishable foes, than coats, cravats, waistcoats, and 
unnameables. 

And now an honest word at parting, about such trivialities of author- 
ship. Why should a poor shepherd of the Landes for ever wear his 
stilts? Or a tragic actor, like some mortified La Trapist, never be 
allowed to lauo-h? Or Mr. Green be denied any other carriage than 
the wicker car of his balloon? Even so, dear reader, pr'ythee suffer a 
serious sort of author sometimes to take off" his wig and spectacles, and 
condescend to think of such minor matters as the toilet and its still- 
recurrino- duties. And, if you should find out the veritable name of 
your weak confessing scribe, think not the less kindly of his graver 
volumes ; this one is his pastime, his holiday laugh, his purposely truant, 
lawless desultory recreance : impute not folly to the face of cheerful- 
ness ; be charitable to such mixtures of alternate gayety and soberness 
Co 37 



434 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

as in thine own mind, if thou searchest, thou shalt find; let me laugh 
with those that laugh, as well as sympathize with weepers; and cavil 
not at those inconsistencies, which of a verity are man's right attributes. 



Ideas lie round about us, thick as daisies in a summer meadow. For 
my own part, I know not what a walk, or a talk, or a peep into a book 
may lead me to. Brunei hit upon the notion of a tunnel-shield, from 
the casual sight of a certain water-beetle, to whom the God of Nature 
had given a protecting buckler for its head. Newton found out gravita- 
tion, by reasoning on the fall of an apple from the tree. Almost every 
invention has been the suggestion of an accident. Even so, to descend 
from great things to small, did a solitary stroll in most-English Devon- 
shire hint to me the next fair topic. It was while wandering about the 
Pyrenean neighbourhood of Linton and Ly'mouth not many months ago, 
that my reveries became concentrated for divers hallucinating hours on 
a very pretty book, with a very pretty title. And here let me remark 
episodically, that I pride myself on titles ; what compositors call " mou- 
keyfying the title-page " is known to be a talent of itself, and one more- 
over to which in these days of advertisements and superficialities many 
a meagre book has owed its popular acceptance. The titles of genera- 
tions back seemed not to have been regarded honest, if they did not 
exhibit on their face a true and particular table of contents ; whereas 
in these sad times, (with many, not with me,) mystery is a good rule, 
but falsehood is a better. Again, those honest-speaking authors of tlie 
past scrupled not to designate their writings as ^A Most Erudite Treatise ' 
on so-and-so, or a "il Right Ingenious Handling of the Mysteries' of 
such-and-such, whereas modern hypocrisy aims at under-rating its own 
pet work ; and more than one book has been ruined in the market, for 
having been carelessly titled by the definite the ; as if, forsooth, it were 
the world's arbiter of that one topic, self-constituted pundit of, e. g., 
title-pages. And this word brings me back: consider the truly English 
music of this one : 

THE SQUIRE, 

AND HIS BEAUTIFUL HOME, 

a fine old country gentleman, pleasantly located, affluent, noble-minded, 
wise, and patriotic. This was to have been shown forth, in wish at 



THE SQUIRE. 435 

least, as somewhat akin to, or congenerous with ' The Doctor, (^c.,' — that 
rambling wonder of strange and multifarious reading : or ' The Rectory 
of Valehead,' or ^ Vicar of Wakefield,'' or ' The Family Robinson Crusoe,^ 
still unwrecked; or many another hearty, cheerful or pathetic tale of 
home, sweet home : and yet as to design and execution strictly original 
and unplagiaristic. The first chapters (simple healthy writing, red- 
olent of green pastures, and linchened rocks, and dew-dropt mountains,) 
might introduce localities ; the beautiful home itself, an Elizabethan 
mansion, with its park, lake, hill and valley scenery; a peep at the blue 
mile-ofF sea, brawling brooks, oak-woods, conservatories, rookery, and 
all such pleasant adjuncts of that most fortunate of pleasure-hunters, a 
country squire, with a princely rent-roll. Then should be detailed, 
circumstantially, the lord of the beautiful home, a picture of the hospit- 
able virtues ; the wife of the beautiful home, a portraiture of happy 
domesticity, admirable also as a mother, a nurse, a neighbour, and the 
poor's best friend : children must abound, of course, or the home is a 
heaven uninhabited ; and shrewd hints might hereabouts be dropped as 
to the judicious or injudicious in matters educational : servants, too, both 
old and young, with discussions on their modern treatment, and on that 
better class of bygones, whom kindness made not familiar, and the right 
assertion of authority provoked not into insolence ; whose interest for 
the dear old family was never merged in their own, and whose honesty 
was as unsuspected as that of young master himself, or sweet little 
mistress Alice. 

After all this, might we descant upon the squire's characteristics. 
Take him as a politician : liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me 
at a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly ; but none 
of your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at 
home and cowardly abroad— mean agitating fellows, the scum of dis- 
goro-ing society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom 
to the surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an 
honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory : with a 
detail of his reasons, notions, and practices thereabouts, inclusive of his 
conduct at elections, his wholesome influence over an otherwise unguided 
or ill-guided tenantry, and as concerning other miscalled corruptions : 
his open argumentation of the representative doctrine, that it ought to 
stop short as soon as ever the religion, the learning, and the wealth of a 
country are fairly represented ; that in fact the poor man thinks little of 
his vote, unless indeed in worse cases looking for a bribe ; and that the 



436 



AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 



principle is pushed into ruinous absurdities when the destitution, the 
crime, and the ignorance of a nation demand their proper representa- 
tives ; that, almost as a consequence of human average depravity, the 
greater the franchise's extension, the worse in all ways become those 
who impersonate the enfranchised; and so, after due condemnation of 
Whiffo-ery, to stultify Chartism, and that demoralizing lie, the ballot. 
Then as to the squire's religion ; and certain confabulations with his 
parson, his household, his harvest-home tenantry, and local preachers 
of dissent and schism ; his creed, practice, and favourable samples of 
daily life. Moreover, our squire should have somewhat to tell of per- 
sonal history and adventures ; a youth of poor dependence on a miser 
uncle ; a storm-tost early manhood, consequent on his high uncompro- 
mising principles; then the miser's death, without the base injustice of 
that cruel will, which an eleventh-hour penitence destroyed : the squire 
comes to his property, marries his one old flame, effects reformations, 
attains popularity, happiness, and other due prosperities. Anecdotes of 
particular passages, as in affliction or in joy ; his son lamed for life, or 
his house half burnt down, his attack by highwaymen, or election for 
parliament. The squire's general confidence in man, sympathy with 
frailties, and success in regenerating long-lost characters. His discourse 
on field sports, displaying the amiable intellectuality of a Gilbert White 
as opposed to the blood-thirsty Nimrodism and Ramrodism of a mad 
Mytton. A marriage ; a funeral ; a disputed legacy of some eccentric 
relative ; with its agreeable concomitants of heartless selfish strife, 
rebuked by the squire's noble example : the conventicle gently put 
down by dint of gradual desertions, and church-going as tenderly 
extended ; vestry demagogues and parochial incendiaries chastised by 
our squire; and divers other adventures, conversations, situations, and 
conditions, illustrative of that grand character, a fine old English gen- 
tleman, all of the olden time. 

Altogether, if well managed, a book like this would be calculated to 
do substantial good in these days of no principle or bad principle. A 
captivating example well applied — witness the use's of biography — is 
infectious among the well-inclined and well-informed. But — but — but 
— I fancy there may exist, and do exist already, admirable books of just 
this character. I have heard of, but not seen, ' The Portrait of a Chris- 
tian Gentleman,^ and another 'of a Churchman:^ doubtless, these, com- 
bined with a sort of Mr. Dovedale in that clever impossible ^ Floreston,'' 
or an equally unnatural and charming Sir Charles Grandison, with a dash 



THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL. 



437 



of scenery and a sprinkle of anecdote, would make up, far better than 
I could fabricate, the fair fine character that once I thought to sketch. 
Moreover, to a plain gentleman, living in the country, of perfectly iden- 
tical ideas with hose of the squire on all imaginable topics, gifted too 
(we will not say with quite his princely rent-roll, but at any rate) with 
sundry like advantages in the way of decent affluence, pleasant scenery, 
an old house, a good wife, and fair children — with plenty of similar 
adventures and circumstantials — and the necessary proportion of high- 
waymen, radicals, rascals, and schismatics dotted all about his neigh- 
bourhood, the idea would seem, to say the least, somewhat egotistic. 
But why may not humble individualities be generalized in grander 
shapes? why not glorify the picture of a cottage with colouring of 
Turner's most imaginative palette ? An author, like an artist, seldom 
does his work well unless he has nature before him: exalted and ideal- 
ized, the Roman beggar goes forth a Jupiter, and country wenches help 
a Howard to his Naiads. Nevertheless, let the Squire and his train pass 
us by, indefinite as Banquo's progeny : let his beautiful home be sub- 
limely indistinct; even such are Martin's setherial cities: the thought 
shall rest unfructified at present — a mummied, vital seed. The review 
is over, and the Squire's troop of yeomanry not required : so let them 
wait till next year's muster. 



Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship, 
this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some 
five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary 
tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm, unhur- 
ried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal. Far, very far be it 
from me to arraign modern reviewers either of partialities or inca- 
pacity ; indeed, it is probable that few men of high talent, character, 
and station, have not, at some time or other, temporarily at least contrib- 
uted to swell their ranks: moreover, from one they have treated so 
magnanimously, they shall not get the wages of ingratitude; they have 
been kind to my dear book-children, and I — don't be so curious — thank 
them for their courtesy w.ith all a father's feeling toward the liberal 
friends of his sons and daughters. Speaking generally, (for, not to flat- 
ter any class of men, truly there are rogues in all,) I am bold to call 
them candid, honest, clever men ; quite superior, as a body, to every 
thing like bribery and corruption, and, with human limitations, little 

37* 



438 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

influenced by motives, either of prejudice or favour. For indefatigable 
industry, unexampled patience, and powers of mind very far above what 
are commonly attributed to them, I, for my humble judgment, would give 
our periodical journalists their honourable due : I am playing no Aber- 
deenshire game of mutual scratching ; I am too hardened now in the 
ways of print to be much more than indifferent as to common praise or 
censure ; that honey-moon is over with me, when a laudatory article in 
some kindly magazine sent a thrill from eye to heart, from heart to 
shoe-sole understanding : I no longer feel rancorous with inveterate wrath 
against a poor editor whose faint praise, impotent to d — , has yet abund- 
ant force to induce a hearty return of the compliment : like some case- 
nardened rock, so little while ago but soft young coral, the surges may 
lash me, but leave no mark ; the sun may shine, but cannot melt me. 
Argal, as the clown says, is my verdict honest: and further now to 
prove it so, shall come the limitations. 

With all my gratitude and right good feeling to our diurnal and heb- 
domadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette and 
newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of lite- 
rature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste ; the 
main cause of this consisting in the essential rapidity of their composi- 
tion. There is not — from the multiplicity of business to be got through, 
there cannot be — adequate time allowed for any thing like justice to the 
claims of each author. Periodicals that appear at longer intervals are 
in all reason more or less excepted from this objection; but by the 
daily and weekly majority, the labours of a life-time are cursorily 
glanced at, hastily judged from some isolated passage, summarily found 
laudable or guilty ; and this weak opinion, strongly enough expressed as 
some compensation in solid superstructure for the sandiness of its 
foundations, is circulated by thousands over all corners of the habitable 
world. To say that the public (those so-called reviewers of reviews, 
but wiser to be looked on only as perusers,) balance all such false ver- 
dicts, might indeed be true in the long run, but unfortunately it is not: 
for first, no run at all, far less a long one, is permitted to the persecuted 
production ; and next, it is notorious, that people think very much as they 
are told to think Now, I have already stated at too much length that 
I have no personalities to complain of, no self-interests to serve : for the 
past I have been well entreated ; and for the future, supposing such an 
unlikelihood as more hypothetical books, I am hard, bold, sanguine, 
stoical ; while, as for the present, though I refuse not my gaimtlet to any 



THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL. 439 

man, my visor shall be raised by none. But I enter the list for others, 
my kinsmen in composing. Authors, to speak it generally, are an ill- 
used race, because judged hastily, often superciliously, for evil or for 
good. It is impossible for the poor public, (who, besides having to earn 
daily bread, have to wade through all the daily papers,) from mere lack 
of hours in the day, to entertain any opinions of their own about a book 
or books : the money to buy them is one objection, the time to read them 
another; to say less of the capacity, the patience, and the will. With- 
out question, they are guided by their teachers ; and the grand fault of 
these is, their everlasting hurry. 

At another necessary failing of reviewers I would only delicately 
hint. The royal We is very imposing ; for example, the king of maga- 
zines, No. 134, (need I name it?) informs us, p. 373, "We happen to 
have now in wear a good long coat of imperial gray," &c.; and some 
fifteen lines lower down, "We are now mending our pen with a small 
knife," and so forth : now all this grandiloquence serves to conceal the 
individual ; and to reduce my other great objection to a single letter, let 
us only recollect that this powerful, this despotic We, is, being inter- 
preted, nothing but an I by itself, a simple scribe, a single and plebeian 
number one. A mere unit, an anonymous, irresponsible unit, dissects in 
a quarter of an hour the grand result of some ten years; and this 
momentary influence on one man's mind, (perhaps wearied, or piqued, 
or biased, or haply unskilled in the point at issue, but at all events inev- 
itably in a hurry to jump at a conclusion,) this light accidental impression 
is sounded forth to the ends of the earth, and leads public opinion in a 
verdict of thunder. And as for yon impertinent parenthesis — or perti- 
nent, as some will say — give me grace thus blandly to suggest a possi- 
bility. The mighty editorial We, upon whose authoritative tones the 
world's opinion will probably be pivoted — whose pen by casual ridicule 
or as casual admiration makes or mars the fortune of some pains-taking 
literary labourer — whose dictum carelessly dispenses local honour or 
disgrace, and has before now by sharp sarcasms, speaking daggers 
thouah usine none, even killed more than one over-sensitive Keats — this 
monarchic We is but a frail mortal, liable at least to "some of the 
imperfections of our common nature, gentlemen," as, for example, to be 
morose, impatient, splenetic, and the more if over-worked. Neither 
should I waive in this place, in this my rostrum of blunt, plain speech, 
the many censurable cases, unhappily too well authenticated, where 
personal enmity has envenomed the reviewing pen against a writer, and 



440 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

stabs in the dark have wounded good men's. fame. Neither, again, those 
other instances where reviewers, not being omniscient, (yet is their knowl- 
edge most various and brilliant,) having been from want of specific 
information incompetent to judge of the matters in question, have striven 
to shroud their ignorance of the greater topic in clamorous attacks of 
its minor incidents; burrowing into a mound if they cannot force a 
breach through the rampart; and mystifying things so cleverly with 
doubts, that we cannot see the blessed sun himself for very fog. 

Now really, good folk, all this should be amended : would that the 
WE were actually plural; would that we had a well-selected bench 
of literary judges; would that some higher sort of Stationers' Hall or 
Athenceum were erected into an acknowledsred tribunal of an author's 
merits or demerits ; would that, to wish the very least, the wholesome 
practice of a well-considered imprimatur were revived ! Let famous 
men, whose reputation is firm-fixed — our Wordsworths, Hallams, Camp, 
bells, Crolys, Wilsons, Bulwers, and the like — decide in the case of at 
least all who desire such decision. I suppose, as no one in ^these selfish 
times will take trouble without pay, that either the judges should be 
numbered among state pensioners, or that each work so calmly exam- 
ined must produce its regular fee : but these are after-considerations ; 
and be sure no writer will grudge a guinea for calm, unbought, unsus- 
pected justice bestowed upon his brain-child. Let all those members 
of the tribunal, deciding by ballot, (here in an assembly where all are 
good, great, and honest, I shrink not from that word of evil omen,) judge, 
as far as possible, together and not separately, of all kinds of literature : 
I would not have poets sentencing all the poetry, historians all the his- 
tory, novelists all the novels, and theologists all the works upon religion ; 
for humanity is at the best infirm, and motives little seai'chable ; but let all 
judge equally in a sort of open court. The machinery might be difficult, 
and I cannot show its workings in so slight an essay ; but surely it is a 
strange thing in civilization, and a stranger when we consider what lite- 
rature does for us, blessing our world or banning it — it is a wonder and 
a shame that books of w^hatever tendency are so cast forth upon the 
waters to sink or swim at hazard. I acknowledge, friend, your present 
muttering, Utopian ! Arcadian ! Formosan ! to be not ill-founded : the 
sketch is a hasty one ; but though it may have somewhat in common 
with the vagaries of Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, and that king 
in impudence, George Psalmanazar, still I stand upon this ground, thai 
many an ill-used author wants protection, and that society, for its own 



THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL. 441 

sake as well as his, ought to supply a court for literary reputation. 
Some poor man the other day, and in a reputable journal too, had five 
new-born tragedies strangled and mangled in as many lines : we need not 
suppose him a Shakspeare, but he might have been one for aught of evi- 
dence given to the contrary ; at any rate, five at once, five mortal tragedies, 
(so puppy-fashion born and drowned,) must, however carelessly executed, 
have been the offspring of no common mind. Again, how often is not a 
laborious historiographer, particularly if of contrary politics, dismissed 
with immediate contempt, because, perchance, in his three full volumes, 
he has admitted two false dates, or haply mistakes the christened name 
of some Spanish admiral! Once more, how continually are not critical 
judgments falsified by the very extracts on which they rest! how often 
the pet passage of one review is the stock butt of another ! Here you 
will say is cure and malady together, like viper's fat and fang: I trow 
not; mainly because not one man in a thousand takes the trouble to 
judge for himself. But it is needless to enumerate such instances; 
every man's conscience or his memory will supply examples whole- 
sale : therefore, maltreated authors, bear witness to your own wrongs : 
jealously regarded by a struggling brotherhood, cruelly baited by self- 
constituted critics, the rejected of publishers, the victimized by book- 
sellers, the garbled in statement, misinterpreted in meaning, suspected 
of friends, persecuted by foes — "O that mine enemy would write a 
book!" It is to put a neck into a noose, to lie quietly in the grove of 
Dr. Guillot's humane prescription : or, if not quite so tragical as this, it 
is at least to sit voluntarily in the stocks with Sir Hudibras, and dare the 
world's contempt; while fashionable — or unfashionable idiotSj who are 
scarcely capable of a grammatical answer to a dinner invitation, (those 
formidably confounded he's and him's!) — think themselves privileged to 
join some inane laugh against a clever, but not yet famous, author, 
because, forsooth, one character in his novel may be an old acquaint- 
ance, or one epithet in a long poem rnay be weak, indelicate, tasteless, 
or foolish, or one philosophical fact in an essay is misstated, or one 
statistical conclusion seems to be exaggerated. It is perfectly paltry to 
behold stupid fellows, whose intellects against your most ordinary scribe 
vary from a rush-light to a "long four," as compared with a roasting, 
roaring kitchen-fire, affecting contemptuously to look down upon some 
unjustly neglected or mercilessly castigated labourer in the brick-fields 
of literature, for not being — can he help it? — a first-rate author, or 
because one reviewer in seven thinks he might have done his subject 



442 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

better justice. Take my word for it — if indeed I can be a fair witness 
— the man who has written a book, is above the unwriting average, and, 
as such, should be ranked mentally above them : no light research, and 
tact, and industry, and head-and-hand labour, are sufficient for a volume ; 
even certain stolid performances in print do not shake my judgment ; 
for arrant blockheads as sundry authors undoubtedly are, the average 
(mark, not all men, but the average) unwriting man is an author's intel- 
lectual inferior. All men, however well capable, have not perchance 
the appetite, nor the industry, nor the opportunity to fabricate a volume; 
nor, supposing these requisites, the moral courage (for moral courage, 
if not physical, must form part of an author's mind,) to publish the 
lucubration: but "I magnify mine office" above the unnumbered host 
of unwriting, uninformed, loose, unlettered gentry, who (as full of leisure 
as a cabbage, and as overflowing with redundant impudence as any 
Radical mob,) mainly tend to form by their masses the average penless 
animal-man, who could not hold a candle to any the most mediocre of 
the Marsyas-used authors of haply this week's journals. Spare them, 
victorious Apollos, spare ! if libels that diminish wealth be punishable, 
is there no moral guilt in those legalized libels that do their utmost 
to destroy a character for wisdom, wit, learning, industry, and inven- 
tion? — Critical flayer, try thou to write a book; learn experimentally 
how difficult, yet relieving ; how nervous, yet gladdening ; how ungra- 
cious, yet very sweet ; how worldly-foolish, yet most wise ; how con- 
versant with scorn, yet how noble and ennobling an attribute of man, is 
— authorship. 

All this rhetoric, impatient friend — and be a friend still, whether 
writer, reviewer, or unauthorial — serves at my most expeditious pace, 
opposing notions considered, to introduce what is (till to-morrow, or per- 
haps the next coming minute, but at any rate for this flitting instant of 
time,) my last notion of possible, but not probable, authorship : a 
rhodomontade oration, rather than an essay, after my own desultory and 
yet determinate fashion, to have been entituled — so is it spelled by act of 
parliament, and therefore let us in charity hope rightly — to have been 
entituled then, 

THE AUTHOR'S TRIBUNAL; 

A COURT OF APPEAL AGAINST AMATEUR AND CONNOISSEUR CRITICISMS: 

and (the present being the next minute whereof I spake above) there 
has just hopped into my mind another taking title, which I generously 



EPILOGUE. 443 

present to any smarting scribe who may meditate a prose version of 
' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' — videlicet, 

ZOILOMASTRIX. 



At length then have I liberty to yawn — a freedom whereof doubtless 
my readers have long been liverymen : I have written myself and my 
inkstand dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, 
emptied ; I go no longer heavily, as one that mourneth ; and with glee- 
ful face can I assure you that your author's mind is once again as light 
as his heart : but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow 
it, and break it, and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously 
on a trans-Atlantic forest ; and when those thronging thoughts are com- 
fortably fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to 
feel, all the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn 
and the winged aerial blossom of sweet spring-tide. An involuntary 
author, just eased for the time of ever-exacting and accumulating 
notions, can sympathize with holiday-making Atlas, chuckling over a 
chance so lucky as the ti'ansfer of his pack to Hercules ; and can com- 
prehend the relief it must have been to that foolish sage in Rasselas, 
when assured that he no longer was afflicted with the care of governing 
a galaxy of worlds. 

Some people are born to talk, with an incessant tongue illustrating 
perpetuity of motion in the much-abused mouth ; some to indite solid 
continuous prose, with a labour-loving pen ever tenanting the hand ; but 
I clearly was born a zoological anomaly, with a pen in my mouth, a sort 
of serpent-tongue. Heaven give it wisdom, and put away its poison ! 

Such being my character from birth, a paper-gossip, a writer from the 
cradle, I ought not demurely to apologize for nature's handicraft, nor 
excuse this light affliction of chattering in print. — Who asks you to read 
it? — Neither let me cast reflections on your temper or your intellect by 
too humble exculpation of this book of many themes; or must I then 
regard you as those sullen children in the market-place, whom piping 
cannot please, and sorrow cannot soften ? 

And now, friend, I 've done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, 
my acknowledgment of this brain-child ; forgive all unintended harms ; 
supply what is lacking in my charities ; politically, socially, authorially 



444 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for 
practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I 
feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man 
offender for an ill-considered word ; commending to the cordial warmth 
of Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect 
which I need an Eccaleobion of literature ; and scorning, as heartily as 
any Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say ; 
suffer me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch 
as Lord Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent 
speech, let me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith 1 
trouble you : " These are my thoughts ; I might have spun them out into 
a greater length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is 
better than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow." 



APPENDIX. 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 

It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently 
characteristic of his desultory indoles — (not indolence, pray you, good 
Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,) — if after having thus formally taken 
his conge with the help of a.Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield, he 
just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now, 
the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little 
honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with 
Romeo I cried, " Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell 
till it be morrow ;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a 
new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and 
wild, before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened- 
up my brown hay-field : or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel 
of precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the pur- 
lieus of Shoe-lane ; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the 
truth shall be told plainly ; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints 
our publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, 
whether or not in this booklet your readership has already found seed 
sufficient for cyclopaedias, I' am free to admit that the expectant butter- 
man at least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hun- 
dred pages ; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I 
can, is my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best 
policy, deny who dare? 

Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although, in 
point of their arising, they were secondary,) as further illustrative of 
my ' Author's Mind ' shown in other specimens ; for example, a linsey- 
woolsey tapestry of many colours shall be hung upon the end of this 
arcade ; the last few trees in this poor avenue shall bear the flowers of 
poetry as well as the fruit of prose; my swan (0, dub it not a goose!) 

38 



446 AN AUTHOR'S MIND]. 

would, like a pnma-donna, go off this theatre of fancy, singing. And 
again, suffer me, good friend, to think your charity still willing to be 
pleased: many weary pages back, I offered you to part with me in 
peace, if you felt small sympathies with a rambler so whimsical and 
lawless ; surely, having walked together kindly until now, we shall not 
quarrel at the last. 

Empty, however — empty, and rejoicing in its unthoughtful emptiness 
— have I boasted this my head but a page or two ago ; and that boast, 
for all the critic's sneer, that no one will deny it, shall not be taken from 
me by renewal of determined meditations ; now that my house is swept 
and garnished, I would not beckon back those old inhabitants. Neither 
let me heed so lightly of your intellect, as to hope to satisfy its reading 
with the scanty harvest of a soil effete; this license of writing up to 
measure shall not show me sterile, any more than that emancipation 
shall, by indulgence of thought, be disenchanted. And now to solve 
the problem : not to think, for my mind is in a regimen of truancy ; not 
to fail in pleasing, if it be possible, the great world's implacable palate, 
therefore to eschew dilution of good liquor; and yet to render up in fair 
array the fitting tale of pages: well, if I may not metaphysically draw 
upon internal resources, I can at least externally and physically resort 
to yonder — desk ; (drawer would have savoured of the Punic, which 
Scipio and I blot out with equal hate;) for therein lie perdus divers 
poeticals I fain would see in print; yea, start not at "poeticals," carp 
not at the threatening sound, for verily, even as carp — so called from 
carpere, to catch if you can, and the Saxon capp, to cavil, because when 
caught they don't pay for mastication — even as carp, a muddy fish, 
difficult to hook, and provocate of hostile criticism, conceals its lack 
of savour in the flavour of port-wine — even so shall strong prose-sauce 
be served up with my poor dozen of sonnets: and ye who would 
uncharitably breathe that they taste stronger of Lethe's mud than of 
Helicon's sweet water, treat me to a belter dish, or carp not at my fishing. 

Imagination, as I need not tell psychologists by this time, is my 
tyrant; I cannot sleep, nor sit out a sermon, nor remember yesterday, 
nor read in peace, (how calm in blessed quiet people seem to read !) 
without the distraction of a thousand fancies : I hold this an infirmity, 
not an accomplishment ; a thing to be conquered, not to be coveted : and 
still I love it, suffering those chains of gossamer to wind about me, that 
seductive honey-jar yet again to trap me, like some poor insect; thus 
then my foolish idolatry heretofore hath hailed 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 447 

IMAGINATION. 

My fond first love, sweet mistress of my mind, 
Thy beautiful sublimity hath long 
Charm'd mine affections, and entranced my song. 
Thou spirit-queen, that sit'st enthroned, enshrined 
Within this suppliant heart ; by day and night 

My brain is ftdl of thee : ages of dreams. 
Thoughts of a thousand worlds in visions bright. 

Fear's dim terrific train. Guilt's midnight schemes. 
Strange peeping eyes, soft smiling fairy faces, 
Dark consciousness of fallen angels nigh. 
Sad converse with the dead, or headlong races 
Down the straight cliffs, or clinging on a shelf 
Of brittle shale, or hunted thro' the sky ! — 
O, God of mind, I shudder at myself! 

Now, friend reader, you have accustomed yourself to think that every 
thing in rhyme, i. e., poetry, as you somewhat scornfully call it, must 
be false : and I am sorry to be obliged to grant you that a leaning towards 
plain matter-of-fact, is no wise characteristic of metrical enthusiasts. 
But believe me for a truth-teller; that sonnet (did you read it?) hints at 
some fearful verities ; and that you may further apprehend this sweet 
ideal mistress of your author's mind, suffer me to introduce to your 
acquaintance 

IMAGINATION PERSONIFIED. 

Dread Monarch-maid, I see thee now before me. 

Searching my soul with those mysterious eyes. 
Spell-bound I stand, thy presence stealing o'er me. 

While all unnerved my trembling spirit dies: 

Oh, what a world of untold wonder lies 
Within thy silent lips! how rare a light , 

Of conquer'd joys and ecstasies repress'd 

Beneath thy dimpled cheek shines half-confess'd ! 
In what luxuriant masses, glossy bright, 

Those raven locks fall shadowing thy fair breast ! 
And, lo! that bursting brow, with gorgeous wings. 

And vague young forms of beauty coyly hiding 

In thy crisp curls, like chenibs there abiding — 
Charmer, to thee my heart enamour'd springs. 

Such, then, and of me so well beloved, is that abstracted Platonism. 
But verily the fear of imagination would far outbalance any love of it, 
if crime had peopled for a man that viewless world with spectres, and 
the Medusa-head of Justice were shaking her snakes in his face. And, 



448 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

by way of a parergon observation, how terrible, most terrible, to the guilty 
soul must be the solitary silent system now so popular among those cold 
legislative schemers, who have ground the poor man to starvation, and 
would hunt the criminal to madness ! How false is that political philos- 
ophy which seeks to reform character by leaving conscience caged up 
in loneliness for months, to gnaw into its diseased self, rather than sur- 
rounding it with the wholesome counsels of better living minds. It is 
not often good for man to be alone : and yet in its true season, (parsi- 
moniously used, not prodigally abused,) solitude does fair service, ren- 
dering also to the comparatively innocent mind precious pleasures: 
religion presupposed, and a judgment strong enough of muscle to rein-in 
the coursers of Imagination's car, I judge it good advice to prescribe for 
most men an occasional course of 

SOLITUDE. 
Therefore delight thy soul in solitude, 

Feeding on peace ; if solitude it be 
To feel that million creatures, fair and good. 

With gracious influences circle thee ; 

To hear the mind's own music ; and to see 
God's glorious world with eyes of gratitude, 

Unwatch'd by vain intruders. Let me shrink 

From crowds, and prying faces, and the noise 

Of men and merchandise ; far nobler joys 
Than chill Society's false hand hath given, 
Attend me when I'm left alone to think. 

To think — alone ? — Ah, no, not quite alone ; 
Save me from that — cast out from earth and heaven, 

A friendless. Godless, isolated one ! 

But of these higher metaphysicals, these fancy-bred extravagations, 
perhaps somewhat too much : you will dub me dreamer, if not proser 
— or rather, poet, as the more modern reproach. Let us then, by way 
of clearing our mind at once of these hallucinations, go forth quickly into 
the fresh green fields, and expatiate with glad hearts on these full-blown 
glories of 

SUMMER. 

Warm summer ! Yes, the very word is warm ; 

The hum of bees is in it, and the sight 

Of sunny fountains glancing silver hght, 
And the rejoicing world, and every charm 
Of happy nature in her hour of love. 

Fruits, flowers, and flies, in rainbow-glory bright: 
The smile of Go(lj,glows graciously above, 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 449 

And genial earth is gratffiil ; day by day 

Old faces come again with blossoms gay, 
Gemming in gladness meadow, garden, grove : 
Haste with thy harvest, then, my softened heart. 

Awake thy better hopes of better days. 

Bring in thy fruits and flowers of thanks and praise. 
And in creation's paean take thy part. 

How different in sterner beauty was the landscape not long since! 
The energies of universal life prisoned up in temporary obstruction ; 
every black hedge-row tufted with woolly snow, like some Egyptian 
mother mourning for her children; shrubs and plants fettered up in 
glittering chains, motionless as those stone-struck feasters before the 
head of Gorgon ; and the dark-green fir-trees swathed in heavy curtains 
of iridescent whiteness. Contrast is ever pleasurable ; therefore we need 
scarcely apologize for an ice in the dog-days— T mean for this present 
unseasonable introduction of uead 

WINTER. 

As some fair statue, white and hard and cold. 

Smiling in marble, rigid, yet at rest. 
Or like some gentle child of beauteous mould. 

Whose placid face and softly swelling breast 

Are fixed in death, and on them bear imprest 
His magic seal of peace — so, frozen, lies 

The loveliness of nature: every tree 
Stands hung with lace against the clear blue skies; 

The hills are giant waves of glistering snow ; 
Rare and northern fowl, now strangely tame to see. 

With ruffling plumage cluster on the bough. 
And tempt the murderous gun ; mouse-like, the wren 

Hides in the new-cut hedge ; and all things now 
Fear starving Winter more than cruel men. 

Ay, " cruel men :" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the 
tangent from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. 
Who does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would 
not rejoice to find even there somewhat of 

CONSOLATIONt 

Scholar of Reason, Grace, and Providence, 

Restrain thy bursting and indignant tears ; 

With tenderest might unerring Wisdom steers 
Through those mad seas the bark of Innocence. 

Dd 38* 



450 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

Doth thy heart burn for vengeance on the deed — 

Some barbarous deed wrought out by cruehy 
On woman, or on famish'd childhood's need, 
Yea, on these fond dumb dogs — doth thy heart bleed 

For pity, child of sensibility? 
Those tears are gracious, and thy wrath most right 

Yet patience, patience ; there is comfort still; 
The Judge is just ; a world of love and light 

Remains to counterpoise the load of ill. 

And the poor victim's cup with angel's food to fill. 

For, as my Psycotherion has long ago informed you, I hope there is 
some sort of heaven yet in reserve for the brute creation: if otherwise, 
in respect of costermongers' donkeys, Kamskatdales' gaunt starved dogs, 
the Guacho's horse, spurred deep with three-inch rowels, the angler's 
worm, Strasburgh geese, and poor footsore curs harnessed to ill-balanced 
trucks — for all these and many more I, for one, sadly stand in need of 
consolation. Meanwhile, let us change the subject. After a dose of 
cruel cogitations, and this corrupting converse with Phalaris and Domi- 
tian, what better sweetener of thoughts than an "olive-branch" in the 
waters of Marah? Spend a moment in the nursery; it is happily fash- 
ionable now, as well as pleasurable, to sport awhile with Nature's pret- 
tiest playthings; the praises of children are always at the tip of my — 
pen, that is, tongue, you remember, and often have I told the world, in 
all the pride of print, of my fond infantile predilections : then let this 
little Chanson be added to the rest ; we will call it 

MARGARET. 

A SONG of gratitude and cheerful prayer 

Still shall go forth my pretty babes to greet, 
As on life's firmament, serenely fair, 

Their little stars arise, with aspects sweet 
Of mild successive radiance: that small pair, 

Ellen and Mary, having gone before 
In this affection's welcome, the dear debt 
Here shall be paid to gentle Margaret: 

Be thou indeed a pearl — in pureness, more 
Than beauty, praise, or price ; full be thy cup. 

Mantling with grace, and truth with mercy met, 

With warm and generous charities flowing o'er; 
And when the Great King makes his jewels up. 

Shine forth, child-angel, in His coronet! 

And while hovering about this fairy-land of sweet-home scenery, and 
confessing thankfully to these domestic affections, your author knows 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 45I 

one heart at least that will be gladdened, one face that will be bright- 
ened by the following 

BIRTH- DAY PRAYER. 

Mother, dear mother, no unmeaning rhyme, 

No mere ingenious compliment of words. 
My heart pours forth at this auspicious time: 

I know a simple honest prayer affords 

More music on affection's thrilling cords. 
More joy, than can be measured or express'd 

In song most sweet, or eloquence sublime. 
Mother, I bless thee ! God doth bless thee too ! 
In these thy children's children thou art blest. 

With dear old pleasures springing up anew: 
And blessings wait upon thee still, my mother! 

Blessings to come, this many a happy year ; 
For, losing thee, where could we find another 

So kind, so true, so tender, and — so dear? 

Is it an impertinence — I speak etymologically — to have dropped that 
sonnet here? — Be it as you will, my Zoilus; let me stand convicted of 
honesty and love: I ask no higher praise in this than to have pleased 
my mother. 

Penman as I am, have been, and shall be, innumerable letters have 
grown beneath my goose-quill. Who cannot say the same indeed? 
For in these patriotic days, for mere country's love and post-office pros- 
perity, every body writes to every body about every thing, or, as oftener 
happens, about nothing. Nevertheless, I wish some kind pundit would 
invent a corrosive ink, warranted to consume a letter within a week after 
it had been read and answered : then should we have fewer of those 
ephemeral documents treasured up in pigeon-holes, and docketed corres- 
pondence for possible publication. Not Byron, nor Lamb, nor West, 
nor Gray, with all their epistolary charms, avail to persuade my preju- 
dice that it is honest to publish a private letter : if written with that 
view, the author is a hypocrite in his friendships ; if not so, the decent 
veil of privacy is torn from social life, confidence is rebuked, betrayed, 
destroyed ; and the suspicion of eaves-droppings and casual scribblings 
to be posthumously printed, makes silence truly wisdom, and grim 
reserve a virtue. This public appetite for secret information, and, if 
possible, for hinted scandal — this unhallowed spirit of outward curiosity 
trespassing upon the sacred precincts of a man's own circle — is to the 
real author's mind a thing to be feared, if he is weak — to be circum- 



452 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

spectly watched, if he is wise. Such is the present hunger for this khid 
of reading, that it would be diffidence, not presumption, in the merest 
school-boy to dread the future publication of his holiday letters; who 
knows — I may jump scathless from the Monument, or in these Popish 
times become excommunicated by special bull, or fly round the world 
in a balloon, or attain to the authorship of forty volumes, or be half- 
smothered by a valet-de-place, or get indicted for inveterate Toryism, or 
any how, I may — notwithstanding all present obscurities that intervene 
— wake one of these fine mornings, and find myself famous: and what 
then? The odds at Tattersall's would be twelve to one that sundry 
busy-bodies, booksellers or otherwise, would scrape together with malice 
prepense, and keep cachet for future print, a multitude of careless 
scrawls that should have been burnt within an hour of the reading. 
Now, is not this a thing to be exclaimed against ? And, utterly improbable 
on the ground of any merit in themselves as I should judge their publi- 
cation (but for certain stolidities of the same sort, that often-timcs have 
wearied me in print), I choose to let my author's mind here enter its 
eternal protest against any such treachery regarding private 

LETTERS. 

Tear, scatter, burn, destroy — but keep them not; 

I hate, I dread those living witnesses 
Of varying self, of good or ill forgot, 

Of altered hopes, and withered kindnesses. 

Oh! call not up those shadows of the dead, 
Those visions of the past, that idly blot 

The present with regret for blessings fled: ' 

This hand that wrote, this ever-teeming head, 
This flickering heart is full of chance and change; 

I would not have you watcli my weaknesses, 
Nor how my foolish likings roam and range, 

Nor how the mushroom friendships of a day 

Hastened in hot-bed ripeness to decay. 
Nor how to mine own self I grow so strange. 

So anathema to editors, maranatha to publishers of all such hypo- 
thetical post-obits ! 

Every one can comprehend something of an author's ease, when he 
sees his manuscript in print: it is safe ; no longer a treasure uninsur- 
able, no longer a locked-up care: it is emancipated, glorified, incapable 
of real extermination ; it has reached a changeless condition ; the chrysalis 
of illegible cacography has burst its bonds, and flies living through the 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 453 

world on the wings of those true Daedali, Faust, and Gutemberg: the 
transition-stale is passed; henceforth for his brain-child set free from 
that nervous slumber, its parent calmly can expect the oblivion of no more 
than a death-like sleep, if he be not indeed buoyed up with certain hope 
of immortality. " 'Tis pleasant sure to see one's self in print," is the 
adequate cause for ninety books out of a hundred ; and, though zeal 
might be the ostentatious stalking-horse, my candour shall give no better 
excuse for the fourteen lines that follow; they require but this preface: 
a most venerable chapel of old time, picturesque and full of interest, 
is dropping to decay, within a mile of me; where it is, and whose the 
fault, are askings improper to be answered : nevertheless, I cast upon 
the waters this meagre morsel of 

APPEAL. 

Shame on thee, Christian, cold and covetous one! 

The laws (I praise them not for this) declare 

That ancient, loved, deserted house of prayer 
As money's wortfe a layman landlord's own. 

Then use it as thine own ; thy mansion there 
Beneath the shadow of this ruinous church 

Stands new and decorate; thine every shed 
And barn is neat and proper; I might search 

Thy comfortable farms, and well despair 

Of finding dangerous ruin ifverliead. 
And damp unwholesome mildew on the walls: 

Arouse thy better self: restore it ; see. 
Through thy neglect the holy fabric falls! 

Fear, lest that crushing guilt should fall on thee. 

I fear much, poor book, this finale of jingling singing will jar upon 
the public ear; all men must shrink from a lengthy snake with a rattle 
in its tail : and this ballast a-stern of over-ponderous poetry may chance 
to swamp so frail a skiff. But I have promised a dozen sonnets in this 
after-thought Appendix ; yea, and I will keep that promise at all mortal 
hazards, even to the superadded unit proverbial of dispensing Forna- 
rinas. Ten have been told off fairly, and now we come upon the gay 
court-cards. After so much of villanous political ferrnent, society returns 
at length to its every-day routine, heedful of other oratory than harangues 
from the hustings, and glad of other reading than figurative party- 
speeches. Yet am I bold to recur, just for a thought or two, to my whilom 
patriotic hopes and fears : fears indeed came first upon me, but hopes 
finally out-voted them: briefly, then, begin upon the worst, and endure, 
with what patience you possess, this croaky stave of bitter 



454 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

POLITICS. 

Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer: 

Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown, ^ 

Her sun of ancient glory going down. 
Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair: 
What wonder should the billows overwhelm 

A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew, 
" Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm ?" 
Yet, no ! — we will not fear ; the loathing realm 

At length has burst its chains ; a motley few, 

The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel, 
The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand 

No more besiege our Zion's citadel: 
But high in hope comes on this nobler band 
For God, the sovereign, and our father-land. 

That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave ; and 
therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes 
to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in 
regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a sub- 
ject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found lack- 
ing. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to whisper 
counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors ; and, in old 
England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to blurt 
out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast 
myself free, a citizen of no mean city — my commission signed by duty 
— my counsel guarantied by truth : and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the 
liberality of your nature provokes you to class me truly in the family 
of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites 
blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from 
my target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist 
upon the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere 
lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd 
men, were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be 
thought of their fraternity. 

But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark ! Stay: there ouo-ht 
to intervene a solemn pause ; for your author's mind, on the spur of the 
occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken, uncom- 
promising, patriotic counsel ; let its fervency atone for its presumption 

Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek. 

As duty prompts and loyalty commands, 
To thee, 0, queen of empires ! would I speak. 



AN AFTER-THOUGHT. 455 

Behold, the most high God hath giv'n to thee 

Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty, 

Setting thee ruler over many lands; 
Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek: 
And many people, nations, languages, 

Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands ; 
Them next to bless, to prosper and to please. 
Nobly forget thyself, and thine own ease: 

Rebuke ill-counsel ; rally round thy state 

The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great: 
So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences! 
And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, 
the largess muffin of Mistress Fornarina : thirteen cards to a suit, and 
thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing ; but, as in reg- 
ular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to confess — 
(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale Joe-Millerism?) — 
the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall give a royal 
chance to criticism most malign : whether candour acknowledo-e it or 
not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in the author's book ; 
and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind Mseonides, (a right notable 
exception,) it holds good as a rule that the majority of original writings, 
directly or indirectly, concern a man's own self; his whims and his 
crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance, wisdom and folly, expe- 
riences and suspicions, therein find a place prepared for them. Scott's 
life naturally produced his earlier novels ; in the ' Corsair,'' the ' ChildCf' 
and the ' X)o7i,' no one can mistake the hero-author ; Southey's works, 
Shelley's, and Wordsworth's, are full of adventure, feeling, and fancy, 
personal to the writers, at least equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or 
of Shakspeare. And as with instances illustrious as those, so with all 
humbler followers, the skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake 
of those gallant ships : an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies 
and amusements, business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of 
life, and qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing 
individuality ; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with 
choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, illustrate, in 
one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it 
from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of 
sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tem- 
pered sarcasm might charge it with conceit ; know then that my humbler 
meaning here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden- 
spoon ; for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old 
time antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener : and so, while in extricating 



456 AN AUTHOR'S MIND. 

my muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have can- 
didly avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this 
avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may 
ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic? 

List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for 
authorship 

THE CATHEDRAL MIND. 

Temple of truths most eloquently spoken, 

Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power, 

The 'Author's Blind,' in all its hallowed riches, 
Stands a cathedral: full of precious things; 
Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken. 

Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aery tower: 

Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches. 

And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings. 
Art's noblest gems, with every fruit and flower, 

Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings. 
Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken : 

An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul ; 
Deep music all arouud enchantment flings; 

And God's great Presence consecrates the whole. 

Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say : nor publisher 
nor printer shall get more copy from me : neither, indeed, would it 
before have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not 
that many beginnings — and you remember my proverbial prelimina- 
rizing — should, for mere antithesis' sake, be endowed with a counter, 
poise of many endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly 
suggest to gentle reader these : that nothing is at once more plebeian and 
unphilosophical than — censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, 
and where apathy is held to be good-breeding; item, (I am quoting 
Scott,) that "it is much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise 
than to compose ;" item, (Sir Walter again, ipsissima verba, in a letter 
to Miss Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear 
to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for 
menders of them, and often make two holes in patching one ;" itetn, that 
in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for 
repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent 
scribe is always at the mercy of compositors ; and lastly, that if it is, 
by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at least 
as much, worthier of a noble mind to give credit for good intentions, 
rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even where hyper- 
criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has been a failure. 



PEOBABILITIES; 



N AID TO FAITH. 



BY THE 

iDTHOR OF "PROVERBIAL PlNLOSOPnY.' 



AUIOST THOU PERSUADE5-T ME TO BE A CHRISTUN." 



HARTFORD: 
PUBLISHED BY SILAS ANDRUS & SON. 

1853. 



PROBABILITIES. 



AN AID TO FAITH. 

The certainty of those things which most surely are believed among 
us, is a matter quite distinct from their antecedent probability or im- 
probability. We know, and take for facts, that Cromwell and Napoleon 
existed, and are persuaded that their characters and lives were such as 
history reports them : but it is another thing, and one eminently calcu- 
lated to disturb any disbeliever of such history, if a man were enabled 
to show, that, from the condition of social anarchy, there was an ante- 
cedent likelihood for the use of military despots ; that, from the condition 
of a popular puritanism, or a popular infidelity, it was previously to have 
been expected that such leaders should have the several characteristics 
of a bigoted zeal for religion, or a craving appetite for worldly glory; 
that, from the condition liable to revolutions, it was probable to find siiuh 
despots arising out of the middle class ; and that, from the condition of 
reaction incidental to all human violences, there was a clear expect- 
abilily that the power of such military monarchs should not be continued 
to their natural heirs. 

Such a line of argument, although in no measure required for the 
corroboration of facts, might have considerable power to persuade d priori 
the man, who had not hitherto seen reason to credit such facts from 
posterior evidence. It would have rolled away a great stone, which to 
such a mind might otherwise have stood as a stumbling-block on the very 
threshold of truth. It would have cleared off a heavy mist, which might 
prevent him from discerning the real nature of the scene in which he 
stood. It would have shown him that, what others know to be fact, is, 
even to him who does not know it, become antecedently probable ; and 
that Reason is not only no enemy to Faith, but is ready and willing to 
acknowledge its alliance. 

Take a second illustration, by way of preliminary. A woodman, 
cleaving an oak, finds an iron ball in its centre ; he sees the fact, and 



460 PROBABILITIES. 

of course believes; some others believing on his testimony. But a cer- 
tain village-pundit, habitually sceptical of all marvels, is persuaded thai 
the wonder has been fabricated by our honest woodman ; until the parson, 
a good historian, coming round that way, proclaims it a most interesting 
circumstance, because it was one naturally to have been expected ; for 
that, here was the spot where, two hundred years ago, a great battle had 
been fought: and it was no improbability at all that a carbine-bullet 
should have penetrated a sapling, nor that the tree should thereafter 
have grown old with the iron at its heart. How unreasonable then 
would appear the pundit's incredulity, if persisted in : how suddenly 
enlightened the rational faith of the rustic : how seasonable would be 
felt the useful learning of him, whose knowledge well applied can thus 
unfetter truth from the bandages of ignorance. 

Illustrations, if apt, are so well adapted to persuade towards a par- 
ticular line of argument, that, at the risk of diffuseness, and because 
minds being various are variously touched, one by one thought and one 
by another, I think fit to add yet more of a similar tendency : in the 
hope that, by a natural induction, such instances may smoothe our way. 

When an eminent living geologist was prosecuting his researches at 
Kirkdale cave, Yorkshire, he had calculated so nicely on the antecedent 
probabilities, that his commands to the labourers were substantially 
these : "Take your mattocks, and pick up that stone flooring; then take 
your basket, and fill it — with the bones of hyaenas and other creatures 
which you will find there." We may fancy the ridicule whercwitli 
ignorance might have greeted science : but lo, the triumph of philosophy, 
when its mandate soon assumed a bodily shape in — bushels of bones 
gnawed as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull that 
looked like a hyasna's ! Do we not see how this bears on our coming 
argument? Such a deposit was very unlikely to be found there in the 
eyes of the unenlightened : but very likely to the wise man's ken. The 
real probabilities were in favour of a strange fact, though the seeming 
probabilities were against it. 

Take another. We are all now convinced of the existence of America ; 
and so, some three or four hundred years back, was Christopher Colum- 
bus — but nobody else. Alone, he proved that mighty continent so 
probable, from geometrical measurements, and the balance of the M'orld, 
and tides, and trade-winds, and casual floatsams driven from some land 
beneath the setting sun, that he was antecedently convinced of the fact: 
and it would have been a shock to his reason, as well as to his faith, had 



AN AID TO FAITH. ' 451 

he found himself able to sail due west from Lisbon to China, without 
Iiaving struck against his huge probability. I purposely abstain from 
applying every illustration, or showing its specific difference regarding 
our theme. It is better to lead a mind to think for itself than to endeavour 
to forestall every notion. 

Another. A Kissoor merchant in Timbuctoo is told of the existence 
of water hard and cold as marble. All the experience of his nation is 
against it. He disbelieves. However, after no long time, the testimony 
of two native princes who have been fHed in England, and have seen 
ice, shakes his once not unreasonable incredulity : and the additional 
idea brought soon to his remembrance, that, as lead cools down from hot 
fluidity to a solid lump, so, in the absence of solar heat, in all probability 
would water — corroborates and makes acceptable by analogous likeli- 
hood the doctrine simultaneously evidenced by credible witnesses. 

Yet one more illustration for the last. Few things in nature appear 
more unlikely to the illiterate, than that a living toad should be found 
prisoned in a block of limestone ; nevertheless, evidence goes to prove 
that such cases are not uncommon. Now, if, instead of limestone, which 
is a water-product, the creature had been found embedded in granite, 
which is a fire-product; although the fact might have been from eye- 
sight equally unimpeachable, how much more unlikely such a circum- 
stance would have appeared in the judgment of science. To the rustic, 
the limestone case is as stout a puzzle as the granite one ; but d priori, 
the philosopher — taking into account the aqueous fluidity of such a 
matrix at a period when reptiles were abundant, the torpid qualities of 
the toad itself, and the fact that time is scarcely an element in the 
absence of air — arrives at an antecedent probability, which comforts his 
acceptance of the fact. The granite would have staggered his reason, 
even though his own experience or the testimony of others were suffi- 
cient, nay, imperative, to assure his faith: but in the case of limestone, 
Reason even helps Faith; nay, anticipates and leads it in, by suggesting 
the wonder to be previously probable. How truly, and how strongly 
this bears upon our theme, let any such philosophizing mind consider. 

But enough of illustrations: although these, multipliable to any 
amount, might bring, each in its own case, some specific tendency to 
throw light upon the path we mean to tread : it is wiser perhaps, as im- 
plying more confidence in the reader's intellectual powers, to leave other 
analogous cases to the suggestion of his own mind ; also, not to vex him 
in every instance with the intrusive finger of an obvious application. 

39* 



462 PROBABILITIES. 

Meanwhile, it is a just opportunity to clear the way at once of some 
obstructions, by disposing of a few matters personal to the writer; and 
by touching upon sundry other preliminary considerations. 

1. The line of thought proposed is intended to show it probable that 
any thing which has been or is, might, viewed antecedently to its exist- 
ence, by an exercise of pure reason, have by possibility been guessed : 
and on the hypothesis of sufficient keenness and experience, that this 
idea may be carried even to the future. Any thing, meaning every 
thing, is a word not used unadvisedly ; for this is merely a suggestive 
treatise, starting a rule capable of infinite application : and, notwithstand- 
ing that we have here and now confined its elucidation to some matters 
of religious moment only, as occupying a priority of importance, and at 
all times deserving the lead ; still, if knowledge availed, and time and 
space permitted, I scarcely doubt that a vigorous and illuminated intellect 
might so far enlarge on the idea, as to show the antecedent probability 
of every event which has happened in the kingdoms of natjare, provi- 
dence, and grace : nay, of directing his guess at coming matters with no 
uncertain aim into the realms of the immediate future. The perception 
of cause in operation enables him to calculate the consequence, even 
perhaps better than the prophecy of cause could in the prior case enable 
him to suspect the consequence. But, in this brief life, and under its 
disturbing circumstances, there is little likelihood of accomplishing in 
practice all that the swift mind sees it easy to dream in theory: and if 
other and wiser pens are at all helped in the good aim to justify the ways 
of God with man, and to clear the course of truth, by some of the notions 
broadcast in this treatise, its errand will be well fulfilled. 

2. Whether or not the leading idea, so propounded, is new, or is new 
in its application as an auxiliary to Christian evidences, the writer is 
unaware: to his own mind it has occurred quite spontaneously and on a 
sudden ; neither has he scrupled to place it before others with whatever 
ill advantage of celerity, because it seemed to his own musings to shed 
a flood of light upon deep truths, which may not prove unwelcome nor 
unuseful to the doubting minds of many. It is true that in this, as in 
most other human efforts, the realization of idea in concrete falls far 
short of its abstract conception in the mind: there, all was clear, quick, 
and easy; here, the necessity of words, and the constraints of an un- 
willing perseverance, clog alike the wings of fancy and the feet of sober 
argument: insomuch that the difference is felt to be quite humiliating 
between the thoughts as they were thought, and the thoughts asthry are 



AN AID TO FAITH. 463 

written. Minerva, springing from the head of Jove, is not more unlike 
the heavily-treading Vulcan. 

3. Necessarily, that the argument be (so to speak) complete, and on 
the wise principle that no fortresses be left untaken in the rear, it must 
be the writer's fate to attempt a demonstration of the anterior probability 
of truths, which a child of reason can not only now never doubt as fact, 
but never could have thought improbable. Instance the first effort, 
showing it to have been expectable that there should, in any conceived 
beginning, have existed a Something, a Great Spirit, whom we call God. 
To have to argue of the mighty Maker, that HE was an antecedent 
probability, would appear a most needless attempt; if it did not occur 
as the first link in a chain of arguments less open to objection by the 
thoughtless. With our little light to try to prove d priori the dazzling 
mystery of a Divine Tri-unity, might (unreasonably viewed) be assailed 
as a presumptuous and harmful thing; but it is our wise prerogative, if 
and when we can, to "Prove all things." Moreover, we live in a world 
wherein Truth's greatest enemy is the man who shrinks from endeavour, 
ing at least to clear away the mists and clouds that veil her precious 
aspect; and at a time when it behooves the reverent Christian to put on 
his panoply of faith and prayer, and meet in argument, according to the 
grace and power given to him — not indeed the blaspheming infidel, for 
such a foe is unreasonable and unworthy of an answer, but — the often 
candid, anxious, and involuntary doubter; the mind, which, righteously 
vexed with the thousand corruptions of truth, and sorely disappointed at 
the conduct of its herd of false disciples, from a generous misconception 
is embracing error : the mind, never enough tenderly treated, but com- 
monly taunted as a sceptic which yet with a natural manliness asserts 
the just prerogative of thinking for itself: fairly enough requiring, though 
rarely finding, evidence either to prop the weakness of a merely educa- 
tional faith, or to argue away the objections to Christianity so rife in the 
clashing doctrines and unholy lives of its pseudo-sectaries. One of our 
poets hath said, " He has no hope who never had a fear :" it is quite as 
true (and take this saying for thy comfort, any harassed misbelieving 
mind), He has no faith, who never had a doubt. There is hope of a 
mind which doubts, because it thinks; because it troubles itself to think 
about what the mass of nominal Christians live threescore years and die 
of very mammonism, without having had one earnest thought about one 
difficulty, or one misgiving: there is hope of a man. who, not licentious 
nor scornful, from simple misconception, misbelieves; there is j'.ist and 



464 PROBABILITIES. 

reasonable hope that (the misconception once removed) his faith will 
shine forth all the warmer for a temporary state of winter. To such 
do I address myself: not presumptuously imagining that I can satisfy 
by my poor thoughts all the doubts, cavils and objections of minds so 
keen and curious ; not affecting to sail well among the shoals of meta- 
physics, nor to plumb unerringly the deeper gulphs of reason ; but 
asking them for awhile to bear with me and hear me to the end patiently ; 
with me, convinced of what [xar' e^oxfiv) is Truth, by far surer and 
stronger arguments than any of the less considerations here expounded 
as auxiliary thereto; to bear with me, and prove for themselves at this 
penning of my thoughts (if haply I am helped in such high enterprise), 
whether indeed those doctrines and histories which the Christian world 
admit, were antecedently improbable, that is, unreasonable : whether, 
on the contrary, there did not exist, prior to any manifestation of such 
facts and doctrines, an exceeding likelihood that they would be so and 
so developed : and whether on the whole, led by reason to the threshold 
of faith, it may be worth while to encounter other arguments, which 
have rendered probabilities now certain. 

4. It is very material to keep in memory the only scope and object 
of this essay. We do not pretend to add one jot of evidence, but only to 
prepare the mind to receive evidence : we do not attempt to prove facts, 
but only to accelerate their admission by the removal of prejudice. If 
a bed-ridden meteorologist is told that it rains, he may or he may not 
receive the fact from the force of testimony ; but he will certainly be more 
predisposed to receive it, if he finds that his weatherglass is falling rather 
than rising. The fact remains the same, it rains ; but the mind — precluded 
by circumstances from positive personal assurance of such fact, and 
able only to arrive at truth from exterior evidence — is in a fitter state 
for belief of the fact from being already made aware that it was probable. 
Let it not then be inferred, somewhat perversely, that because antecedent 
probabilities are the staple of our present argument, the theme itself. 
Religion, rests upon hypotheses so slender : it rests not at all upon such 
straws as probabilities, but on posterior evidence far more firm. What 
we now attempt is not to prop the ark, but favourably to predispose the 
mind of any reckless Uzzah, who might otherwise assail it ; not to 
strengthen the weak places of religion, but to annul such disinclination to 
receive Truth, as consists in prejudice and misconception of its likelihood. 
The goodly ship is built upon the stocks, the platforms are reared, and 
the cradle is ready; but mistaken preconceptions may scatter the 



AN AID TO FAITH, 



465 



incline with gravel-stones rather tlian witli grease, and thus put a 
needless hindrance to the launching: whereas a clear idea that the 
probabilities are in favour, rather than the reverse, will make all smooth, 
lubricate, and easy. If, then, we fail in this attempt, no disservice 
whatever is done to Truth itself; no breach is made in the walls, no 
mine sprung, no battlement dismantled ; all the evidences remain as 
they were ; we have taken nothing away. Even granting matters 
seemed anteriorily improbable, still, if evidence proved them true, such 
anterior unlikelihood would entirely be merged in the stoutly proven 
facts. Moreover, if we be adjudged to have succeeded, we have added 
nothing to Truth itself; no, nor to its outworks. That sacred temple 
stands complete, firm and glorious from corner-stone to top-stone. We 
do but sweep away the rubbish at its base; the drifting desert sands 
that choke its portals. We only serve that cause (a most high privilege), 
by enlisting a prejudgment in its favour. We propose herein an auxil- 
iary to evidence, not evidence itself; a finger-post to point the way to 
faith; a little light of reason on its path. The risk is really nothing; 
but the advantage, under favour, may be much. 

5. It is impossible to elude the discussion of topics, which in their 

direct tendencies, or remoter inferences, may, to the author at least, 

prove dangerous or disputable ground. If a "great door and effectual" 

is opened to him, doubtless he will raise or meet with many adversaries. 

Besides mere haters of his creed, despisers of his arguments, and 

protestors, loud and fierce against his errors; he may possibly fall foul 

of divers unintended heresies; he may stumble unwittingly on the relics 

of exploded schisms ; he may exhume controversies in metaphysical or 

scholastical polemics, long and worthily extinct. If this be so, he can 

only plead, Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But it is open to 

him also to protest against the common critical folly of making an 

offender for a word : of driving analogies on all four feet, and straining 

thoughts beyond their due proportions. Above all, never let a reader 

stir one inch beyond, far less against, his own judgment: if there seem 

to be sufficient reasons, well : if otherwise, let me walk uncompanied. 

The first step especially is felt to be a very difficult one ; perhaps very 

debatable : for aught I know, it may be merely a vain insect caught 

in the cobweb of metaphysics, soon to be destroyed, and easily to be 

discussed at leisure by some Aranean logician. However, it seemed to 

my midnight musings a probable mode of arriving at truth, though 

somewhat unsatisfactorily told from poverty of thought and language. 

Ee 



466 



PROBABILITIES. 



Moreover, it would have been, in such a priori argument, ridiculous to 
have commenced by announcing a posterior conclusion : for this cause 
did I do my humble best to work it out anew : and however supererog- 
atory it may seem at first sight to the majority of readers, those keener 
minds whom I mainly address, and whose interests I wish to serve, will 
recognise the attempt as at least consistent : and will be ready to admit 
that if the arduous effort prove anteriorly a First Great Cause, and His 
attributes, be futile (which, however, I do not admit), it was an attempt 
unneeded on the score of its own merits; albeit, with an obvious 
somewhat of justice, pure reason may desire to begin at the beginning. 
No one, who thinks at all upon religion, however misbelieving, can 
entertain any mental prejudice against the existence of a Deity, or 
against the received character of His attributes. Such a man would be 
merely in a savage state, irrational : whilst his own mind, so speculating, 
would stand itself proof positive of an Intellectual Father; either imme- 
diately, as in the first man's case, or mediately, as in our own, it must 
have sprung out of that Being, who is emphatically ^the Good One — 
God. But if, as is possible, a mind, capable of thinking, and keen to 
think on other themes, from any cause, educational or moral, has 
neglected this great track of mediation, has "forgotten God," and "had 
him not in all his thoughts," such an one I invite to walk with me ; and, 
in spite of all incompleteness and insufficiency, uncaptious of much that 
may haply be fanciful or false, briefly and in outline to test with me 
sundry probabilities of the Christian scheme, considered antecedently to 
its elucidation. 



A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

I WILL commence with a noble, and, as I believe, an inspired sentence : 
than which no truth uttered by philosophers ever was more clearly or 
more sublimely expressed. "In the beginning was the Word : and the 
Word was with God ; and the Word was God." In its due course, we Mill 
consider especially the difference between the Word and God ; likewise 
the seeming contradiction, but true concord, of being simultaneously God, 
and with God. At present, and previously to the true commencement of 
our a priori thoughts, let us, by a word or two, paraphrase that brief but 
comprehensive sentence, "In the beginning was the Word." Eternity 
has no beginning, as it has no end : the clock of Time is futile there : it 



A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 457 

might as well attempt to go in vacuo. Nevertheless, in respect to 
finite intelligences like ourselves, seeing that eternity is an idea totally- 
inconceivable, it is wise, nay it is only possible, to be presented to the 
mind piecemeal. Even our deepest mathematicians do not scruple to 
speak of points "infinitely remote;" as if in that phrase there existed no 
contradiction of terms. So, also, we pretend in our emptiness to talk of 
eternity past, time present, and eternity to come ; the fact being that, 
muse as a man may, he can entertain no idea of an existence which is 
not measurable by time : any more than he can conceive of a colour 
unconnected with the rainbow, or of a musical note beyond the seven 
sounds. The plain intention of the words is this : place the starting-post 
of human thought as far back into eternity as you will, be it what man 
counts a thousand ages, or ten thousand times ten thousand, or be these 
myriads multiplied again by millions, still, in any such Beginning, and 
in the beginning of all beginnings (for so must creatures talk) — then 
was God. He Was: the scholar knows full well the force of the 
original term, the philological distinctions between £i>i and yfyvo/iai .- well 
pleased, he reads as of the Divinity vv, He self-existed ; and equally 
well pleased he reads of the humanity iyevvoei?, he was born. The 
thought and phrase vv sympathizes, if it has not an identity, with the 
Hebrew's unutterable Name. He then, whose title, amongst all others 
likewise denoting excellence supreme and glory underivative, is essen- 
tially "I am ;" He who, relatively to us as to all creation else, has a new 
name wisely chosen in "the Word," — the great expression of the idea 
of God ; this mighty Intelligence is found in any such beginning self- 
existent. That teaching is a mere fact, known posteriorly from the 
proof of all things created, as well as by many wonderful signs, and the 
clear voice of revelation. We do not attempt to prove it; that were 
easy and obvious : but our more diflScult endeavour at present is to show 
how antecedently propable it was that God should be : and that so being, 
He should be invested with the reasonable attributes, wherewithal we 
know His glorious Nature to be clothed. 

Take then our beginning where we will, there must have existed in 
that "originally " either Something, or Nothing. It is a clear matter 
to prove, d posteriori, that Something did exist ; because something 
exists now : every matter and every derived spirit must have had a 
Father ; ex nihilo nihil Jit, is not more a truth, than that creation must 
have had a Creator. However, leaving this plain path (which I only 
point at by the way for obvious mental uses), let us now try to get at 



4G8 



PROBABILITIES 



the great antecedent probability that in the beginning Something should 
have been, rather than Nothing. 

The term, Nothing, is a fallacious one : it does -not denote an exist- 
ence, as Something does, but the end of an existence. It is in fact a 
neo-ation, which must presuppose a matter once in being and possible to 
be denied ; it is an abstraction, which cannot happen unless there be 
somewhat to be taken away ; the idea of vacuity must be posterior to 
that of fullness ; the idea of no tree is incompetent to be conceived 
without the previous idea of a tree ; the idea of nonentity suggests, ex 
vi termini, a pre-existent entity ; the idea of Nothing, of necessity, pre- 
supposes Something. And a Something once having been, it would still 
aiid for ever continue to be, unless sufficient cause be found for its 
removal ; that cause itself, you will observe, being a Something. The 
chances are forcibly in favour of continuance, that is of perpetuity ; and 
the likelihoods proclaim loudly that there should be an Existence. It 
was thus, then, antecedently more probable, than in any imaginable 
beginning from which reason can start. Something should be found 
existent, rather than Nothing. This is the first probability. 

Next ; of what nature and extent is this Something, this Being, likely 
to be ? — There will be either one such being, or many : if many, the 
many either sprang from the one, or the mass are all self-existent ; in 
the former case, there would be a creation and a God : in the latter, 
there would be many Gods. Is the latter antecedently more proba- 
ble? — let us see. First, it is evident that if many are probable, few are 
more probable, and one most probable of all. The more possible gods 
you take away, the more do impediments diminish ; until, that is to say, 
you arrive at that One Being, whom we have already proved probable. 
Moreover, many must be absolutely united as one ; in which case the 
many is a gratuitous difficulty, because they may as well be regarded 
for all purposes of worship or argument as one God : or the many must 
have been in essence more or less disunited ; in which case, as a state 
of any thing short of pure concord carries in itself the seeds of disso- 
lution, needs must that one or other of the many (long before any pos- 
sible beginnings, as we count beginnings, looking down the past vista 
of eternity), would have taken opportunity by such disturbing causes to 
become absolute monarch : whether by peaceful persuasion, or hostile 
compulsion, or other mode of absorbing disunions, would be indifferent ; 
if they were not all improbable, as unworthy of the God. Perpetuity 
of discord is a thing impossible ; every thing short of unity tends to 



A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES 



469 



decomposition. Any how then, given the element of eternity to work in, 
a one great Supreme Being was, in the created beginning, an d priori 
probability. That all other assumptions than that of His true and 'eternal 
Oneness are as false in themselves as they are derogatory to the rational 
views of deity, we all now see and believe ; but the direct proofs of this 
are more strictly matters of revelation than of reason : albeit reason 
too can discern their probabilities. Wise heathens, such as Socrates 
and Cicero, who had not our light, arrived nevertheless at some of this 
perception; and thus, through conscience and intelligence, became a 
law unto themselves : because that, to them, as now to any one of us 
who may not yet have seen the light, the anterior likelihood existed for 
only one God, rather than more ; a likelihood which prepares the mind 
to take as a fundaniental truth, "The Lord our God is one Jehovah." 

Next; Self-existence combined with unity must include the probable 
attribute, or character, Ubiquity ; as I now proceed to show. On the 
same principle as that by which we have seen Something to be likelier 
than Nothing, we conclude that the same Something is more probable 
to be every where, than the same Nothing (if the phrase were not 
absurd), to be any where : we may, so to speak, divide infinity into spaces, 
and prove the position in each instance : moreover, as that Something is 
essentially — not a unit as of many, but — unity involving all, it follows as 
most probable that this Whole Being should be ubiquitous ; in other 
parlance, that the one God should be every where at once : also, there 
being no limit to what we call Space, nor any imaginable hostile power 
to place a constraint upon the One Gi'eat Being, this Whole Beino- 
must be ubiquitous to a degree strictly infinite : "he is in every place, 
beholding the evil and the good." 

Such a consideration (and it is a perfectly true one) renders neces- 
sary the next point, to wit, that God is a Spirit. No possible substance 
can be every where at once : essence may, but not substance. Cor- 
poreity in any shape must be local ; local is finite ; and we have just 
proved the anterior probability of a One great Existence being (not- 
withstanding unity of essence) infinite. lUocal and infinite are convert- 
ible terms : spirit is illocal ; and, as God is infinite — that is, illocal — it 
is clear that "God is a Spirit." 

We have thus (not attempting to build up faith by such slight tools, 
but only using them to cut away prejudice) arrived at the high proba- 
bility of a God invested with His natural qualities or attributes ; Self, 
existence, Unity, the faculty of being every where at once and that 

40 



470 PROBABILITIES. 

every where Infinitude ; and essentially of a Spiritual nature, not 
material. His nnoral, or accidental attributes (so to speak), were, ante 
cedently to their expression, equally easy of being proved probable. 
First, with respect to Power : given no disturbing cause — (we shall 
soon consider the question of permitted evil, and its origin ; but this, 
however disturbing to creatures, will be found not only none to God, 
but, as it were, only a ray of His glory suffered to be broken for pris- 
matic beauty's sake, a flash of the direction of His energies suffered to 
be diverted for the superior triumph of good in that day when it shall 
be shown that " God hath made all things for himself, yea, even the 
wicked for the time of visitation") — with the datum then of no disturb- 
ing cause obstructing or opposing, an infinite being must be able to do 
all things within the sphere of such infinity : in other phrase. He must 
be all-powerful. Just so, an impetus in vacuity suffers no check, but 
ever sails along among the fleet of worlds ; and the innate Impulse of 
the Deity must expand and energize throughout that infinitude. Himself. 
For a like reason of ubiquity, God must know all things : it is impossi- 
ble to escape from the strong likelihood that any intelligent being must 
be conversant of what is going on under his very eye. Again ; in the 
case both of Power and Knowledge, alike with the coming attributes of 
Goodness and Wisdom — (wisdom considered as morally distinct from 
mere knowledge or awaredness ; it being quite possible to conceive a 
cold eye seeing all things heedlessly, and a clear mind knowing all 
things heartlessly) — in the case, I, say, of all these accidental attributes, 
there recurs for argument, one analogous to that by which we showed 
the anterior probability of a self-existence. Things positive must pre- 
cede things negative. Sight must have been, before blindness is pos- 
sible ; and before we can arrive at a just idea of no sight. Power 
must be precursor to an abstraction from power, or weakness. The 
minor-existence of ignorance is an impossibility, unless you preallow 
the major-existence of wisdom ; for it amounts to a debasing or a dimi- 
nution of wisdom. Sin is well defined to be, the transgression of law ; 
for without law, there can be no sin. So, also, without wisdom, there 
can be no ignorance ; without power, there can be no weakness ; with- 
out goodness, there can be no evil. 

Furthei'more. An affirmative — such as wisdom, power, goodness — 
can exist absolutely ; it is in the nature of a Something : but a negative 
— such as ignorance, weakness, evil — can only exist relatively ; and it 
would, indeed, be a Nothing, were it not for the previous and now 



A GOD: AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 471 

simultaneous existence of its wiser, stronger, and better origin. Ab- 
stract evil is as demonstrably an impossibility as abstract ignorance, or 
abstract weakness. If evil could have self-existed, it would in the 
moment of its eternal birth have demolished itself. Virtue's intrinsic 
concord, tends to perpetual being : vice's innate discord struggles always 
with a force towards dissolution. Goodness, wisdom, power have exist- 
ences, and have had existences from all eternity, though gulphed within 
the Godhead ; and that, whether evidenced in act or not : but their cor- 
ruptions have had no such original existence, but are only the same 
entities perverted. Love would be love still, though there were no 
existent object for its exercise : Beauty would be beauty still, though 
there were no created thing to illustrate its fairness : Power would be 
power still, though there be no foe to combat, no difficulty to be overcome. 
Hatred, ill-favour, weakness, are only perversions or diminutions of 
these. Power exists independently of muscles or swords or screws or 
levers ; love, independently of kind thoughts, words, and actions ; beauty, 
independently of colours, shapes, and adaptations. Just so is Wisdom 
philosophically spoken of by a truly royal and noble author : 

"I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out the knowledge of 
clever inventions. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom ; I am under- 
standing ; I have strength. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of 
his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from 
the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I 
was brought forth ; before the mountains were fixed, or the hills were 
made. When He prepared the heavens, I was there ; when he set a 
compass upon the face of the depth; when he established the clouds 
above ; when he strengthened the foundations of the deep : Then was I 
by him, as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight, 
rejoicing always before him ; rejoicing in the habitable parts of his 
earth ; and my delights were with the sons of men." 

King Solomon well knew of Whom he wrote thus nobly. Eternal 
wisdom, power, and goodness, all prospectively thus yearning upon 
man, and incorporate in One, whose name, among his many names, is 
Wisdom. Wisdom, as a quality, existed with God ; and, constituting 
full pervasion of his essence, was God. 

But to return, and bind to a conclusion our ravelled thoughts. As, 
orio-inally, the self-existent being, unbounded, all-knowing, might take 
up, so to speak, if .He willed, these eternal affirmative excellences of 
wisdom, power, and goodness ; and as these, to every rational appre- 



472 PROBABILITIES. 

hension, are highly worthy of his choice, whereas their derivative and 
inferior corruptions would have been most derogatory to any reasonable 
estimate of His character ; how much more likely was it that He should 
prefer the higher rather than the lower, should take the affirmative 
before the negative, should "choose the good, and refuse the evil," — 
than endure to be endowed with such garbled, demoralizing, finite attri- 
butes as those wherewith the heathen painted the Pantheon. What high 
antecedent probability was there, that if a God should be (and this we 
have proved highly probable too) — He should be One, ubiquitous, self- 
existent, spiritual: that He should be all-mighty, all-wise, and all-good? 



THE TRIUNITY. 

Another deep and inscrutable topic is now to engage our thoughts — 
the mystery of a probable Triunity. While we touch on such high 
themes, the Christian's presumption ever is, that he himself approaches 
them with reverence and prayer; and that, in the case of an unbeliever, 
any such mind will be courteous enough to his friendly opponent, and 
wise enough respecting his own interest and safety lest these things be 
true, to enter upon all such subjects with the seriousness befitting their 
importance, and with the restraining thought that in fact they may be 
sacred. 

Let us then consider, antecedently to all experience, with what sort 
of deity pure reason would have been satisfied. It has already arrived 
at Unity, and the foregoing attributes. But what kind of Unity is prob- 
able ? Unity of Person, or unity of Essence ? A sterile solitariness, 
easily understandable, and presumably incommunicative ? or an abso- 
lute oneness, which yet relatively involves several mysterious phases of 
its own expansive love ? Will you think it a foregone conclusion, if I 
assert the superior likelihoods of the latter, and not of the former? Let 
us come then to a few of many reasons. First : it was by no means 
probable to be supposed anteriorly, that the God should be clearly com- 
prehensible : yet he must be one : and oneness is the idea most easily 
apprehended of all possible ideas. The meanest of intellectual crea- 
tures could compi'ehend his Maker, and in so far top his heights, if God, 
being truly one in one view, were yet only one in every view : if, that 
is to say, there existed no mystery incidental to his nature : nay, if that 



THE TRIUNITY. 



473 



mystery did not amount to the difficulty of a seeming contradiction. I 
judge it likely, and with confidence, that Reason would prerequire for 
his God, a Being, at once infinitely easy to be apprehended by the lowest 
of His spiritual children, and infinitely difficult to be comprehended by 
the highest of His seraphim. Now, there can be guessed only two 
ways of compassing such a prerequirement : one, a moral way ; such 
as inventing a deity who could be at once just and unjust, everywhere 
and no where, good and evil, powerful and weak ; this is the heathen 
phase of Numen's character, and is obviously most objectionable in 
every point of view : the other would be a physical way ; such as 
requiring a God who should be at once material and immaterial, 
abstraction and concretion ; or, for a still more confounding paradox to 
Reason (considered as antagonist to Faith, in lieu of being strictly its 
a]''-), an arithmetical contradiction, an algebraic mystery, such as 
would be included in the idea of Composite Unity ; one involving many, 
and many collapsed into one. Some such enigma was probable in 
Reason's guess at the nature of his God. It is the Christian way ; and 
one entirely unobjectionable : because it is the only insuperable diffi- 
culty as to His Nature which does not debase the notion of Divinity. 
But there are also other considerations. 

For, secondly. The self-existent One is endowed, as we found prob- 
able, with abundant loving-kindness, goodness overflowing and perpetual. 
Is it reasonable to conceive that such a character could for a moment 
be satisfied with absolute solitariness ? that infinite benevolence should, 
in any possible beginning, be discovered existent in a sort of selfish 
only-oneness? Such a supposition is, to the eye of even unenlightened 
Reason, so clearly a reductio ad absurdum, that men in all countries 
and ages have been driven to invent a plurality of Gods, for very society 
sake : and I know not but that they are anteriorly wiser and more 
rational than the man who believes in a Benevolent Existence eternally 
one, and no otherwise than one. Let me not be mistaken to imply that 
there was any likelihood of many coexistent gods : that was a reasona- 
ble improbability, as we have already seen, perhaps a spiritual impossi- 
bility : but the anterior likelihood of which I speak goes to show, that in 
One God there should be more than one coexistence : each, by arith- 
metical mystery, but not absurdity, pervading all, coequals, each being 
God, and yet not three Gods, but one God. That there should be a 
rational difficulty here — or, rather, an irrational one — I have shown to 
be Reason's i;)rerequirement : and if such a one as I, or any other crea- 

40* 



474 PROBABILITIES. 

ture, could now and here (ay, or any wlien or any where, in the heights 
of highest heaven, and the far-stretching distance of eternity) -solve such 
intrinsic difficulty, it would demonstrably be one not worthy of its source, 
the wise design of God : it would prove that riddle read, which uncreate 
omniscience propounded for the baffling of the creature mind. No. It 
is far more reasonable, as well as far more reverent, to acquiesce in 
Mystery, as another attribute inseparable from the nature of the God- 
head ; than to quibble about numerical puzzles, and indulge unwisely 
in objections which it is the happy state of nobler intelligences than man 
on earth is, to look into with desire, and to exercise withal their keen 
and lofty minds. 

But we have not yet done. Some further thoughts remain to be 
thrown out in the third place, as to the preconceivable fitness or propri- 
ety of that Holy Union, which we call the trinity of Persons who con- 
stitute the Self-existent One. If God, being one in one sense, is yet 
likely to appear, humanly speaking, more than one in another sense ; 
we have to inquire anteriorly of the probable nature of such other 
intimate Being or Beings : as also, whether such addition to essential 
oneness is likely itself to be more than one or only one. As to the 
former of these questions : if, according to the presumption of reason 
(and according also to what we have since learned from revelation ; but 
there may be good policy in not dotting this book with chapter and 
verse) — if the Deity thus loved to multiply Himself; then He, to whom 
there can exist no beginning, must have so loved, so determined, and so 
done from all eternity. Now, any conceivable creation, however 
originated, must have had a beginning, place it as far back as you will, 
la any succession of numbers, however infinitely they may stretch, the 
commencement at least is a fixed point, one. But, this multiplication of 
Deity, this complex simplicity, this intricate easiness, this obvious para- 
dox, this sub-division and con-addition of a One, must have taken place, so 
soon as ever eternal benevolence found itself alone ; that is, in eternity, 
and not in any imaginable time. So then, the Being or Beings would 
probably not have been creative, but of the essence of Deity. Take 
also for an additional argument, that it is an idea which detracts from 
every just estimate of the infinite and all-wise God to suppose He should 
take creatures into his eternal counsels, or consort, so to speak, familiarly 
with other than the united sub-divisions, persons, and coequals of Him- 
self. It was reasonable to prejudge that the everlasting companions of 
Benevolent God, should also be God. And thus, it appears antecedently 



THE TRIUNITY. 



475 



probable that (what from the poverty of language we must call) the 
multiplication of the one God should not have been created beings; that 
is, should have been divine ; a term, which includes, as of right, the 
attribution to each such Holy Person, of all the wondrous character, 
istics of the Godhead. 

Again : as to the latter question ; was it probable that such so-called 
sub-divisions should be two, or three, or how many ? I do not think it 
will be wise to insist upon any such arithmetical curiosity as a perfect 
number; nor on such a toy as an equilateral triangle and its properties; 
nor on the peculiar aptitude for sub-division in every thing, to be dis- 
cerned in a beginning, a middle, and an end ; nor in the consideration 
that every fact had a cause, is a constancy, and produces a consequence : 
neither, to draw any inferences from the social maxim that for counsel, 
companionship, and conversation, the number three has some special 
fitness. Some other similar fancies, not altogether valueless, might be 
alluded to. It seems preferable, however, on so grand a theme, to 
attempt a deeper dive, and a higher flight. We would then, reverently 
as always, albeit equally as always with the free-born boldness of God's 
intellectual children, attempt to prejudge how many, and with what dis- 
tinctive marks, the holy beings into whom (a« liros tnrhv) God, for very 
Benevolence sake, pours out Essential Unity, were likely to be. 

Let us consider what principles, as in the case of a forthcoming 
creation, would probably be found in action, to influence such ci'eation's 
Author. 

First of all, there would be Will, a will energized by love, disposing 
to create : a phase of Deity aptly and comprehensively typified to all 
minds by the name of a universal Father : this would be the primary 
impersonation of God. And is it not so? 

Secondly: there would be (with especial reference to that idea of cre- 
ation which doubtless at most remote beginnings occupied the Good 
One's contemplation), there would be next, I repeat, in remarkable 
adaptation to all such benevolent views, the great idea of principle, 
Obedience ; conforming to a Father's righteous laws, acquiescing in his 
just will, and returning love for love : such a phase could not be better 
shadowed out to creatures than by an Eternal Son ; the dutiful yet 
supreme, the subordinate yet coequal, the amiable yet exalted Avatar 
of our God. This was probable to have been the second impersonation 
of Deity. And is it not so ? 

Thirdly : Springing from the conjoint ideas of the Father and the 



476 PROBABILITIES. 

Son, and with similar prospection to such instantly creative universe, 
there would occur the grand idea of Generation ; the mighty coequal, 
pure, and quickening Impulse : aptly announced to men and angels as 
the Holy Spirit. This was to have been the 'third impersonation of 
Divinity. And is it not so ? 

Of all these — under illumination of the fore-known fact, I speak, in 
their aspect of anterior probability. With respect to more possible 
Persons, I at least cannot invent one. There is, to my reflection, neither 
need nor fitness for a fourth, or any further Principle. If another can, 
let him look well that he be not irrationally demolishing an attribute 
and setting it up as a principle. Obedience is not an attribute ; nor 
Generation ; nor Will : whilst the attribute of Love, pervading all, sets 
these only possible three Principles going together as One in a myste- 
rious harmony. I would not be misunderstood ; persons are not princi- 
ples ; but principles may be illustrated and incorporative in persons. 
Essential Love, working distinctively throughout the Three, unites them 
instinctively as One : even as the attribute Wisdom designs, and the 
attribute Power arranges all the scheme of Godhead. 

And novv I ask Reason, whether, presupposing keenness, he might not 
have arrived by calculation of probabilities at the likelihood of these 
great doctrines : that the nature of God would be an apparent contra- 
diction : that such contradiction should not be moral, but physical ; or 
rather verging towards the metaphysical, as immaterial and more pro- 
found : that God, being One, should yet, in his great Love, marvellously 
have been companioned from eternity by Himself: and that such Holy 
and United Confraternity should be so wisely contrived as to serve for 
the bright unapproachable exemplar of love, obedience, and generation 
to all the future universe, such Triunity Itself existing uncreated. 



THE GODHEAD VISIBLE. 

We have hitherto mused on the Divinity, as on Spirit invested with 
attributes: and this idea of His nature was enough for all requirements 
antecedently to a creation. At whatever beginning we may suppose 
such creation to have commenced, whether countless ages before our 
present Kianoi, or only a sufficient time to have prepared the crust of 
earth ; and to whatever extent we may imagine creation to have spread, 
whether in those remote periods originally to our system alone and at after 



THE GODHEAD VISIBLE. 477 

eras to its accompanying stars and galaxies and firmaments ; or at one 
and the same moment to have poured material existence over space to 
which our heavens are as nothing: whatever, and whenever, and 
wherever creation took place, it would appear to be probable that some 
one person of the Deity should, in a sort, become more or less concretely 
manifested ; that is, in a greater or a minor degree to such created minds 
and senses visible. Moreover, for purposes at least of a concentrated 
worship of such creatures, that He should occasionally, or perhaps 
habitually, appear local. I mean, that the King of all spiritual poten- 
tates and the subordinate Excellencies of brighter worlds than ours, the 
Sovereign of those whom we call angels, should will to be better known 
to and more aptly conceived by such His admiring creatures, in some 
usual glorious form, and some wonted sacred place. Not that any 
should see God, as purely God ; but, as God relatively to them, in the 
capacity of King, Creator, and the Object of all reasonable worship. It 
seems anteriorly probable that one at least of the Persons in the Godhead 
should for this purpose assume a visibility ; and should hold His court 
of adoration in some central world, such as now we call indefinitely 
Heaven. That such probability did exist in the human forecast, as con- 
cerns a heaven and the form of God, let the testimony 5f all nations 
now be admitted to corroborate. Every shape from a cloud to a croco- 
dile, and every place from ^Ether to Tartarus, have been peopled b}' 
man's not quite irrational device with their so-called gods. But wc 
must not lapse into the after-argument : previous likelihood is our harder 
theme. Neither, in this section, will we attempt the probabilities of the 
place of heaven : that will be found at a more distant page. We have 
here to speak of the antecedent credibility that there should be some 
visible phase of God ; and of the shape wherein he would be most likely, 
as soon as a creation was, to appear to such his creatures. With 
respect, then, to the former. Creatures, being finite, can only compre- 
hend the infinite in his attribute of unity : the other attributes being 
apprehended (or comprehended partially) in finite phases. But, unity 
beinfT a purely intellectual thought, one high and dry beyond the moral 
feelings, involves none of the requisites of a spiritual, that is an affec- 
tionate, worship ; such worship as it was likely that a beneficent Being 
would, for his creatures' own elevation in happiness, command and 
inspire towards Himself. In order, therefore, to such worship and such 
inspiration acting through reason, it would appear fitting that the Deity 
should manifest Himself especially with reference to that heavenly Ex. 



478 PROBABILITIES. 

emplar, the Three Divine Persons of the One Supreme Essence already 
shown to have been probable. And it seems likeliest and discreetest to 
my thinking, that, with this view, the secondary phase, loving Obedi- 
ence, under the dictate of the primary phase, a loving Will, and ener- 
gized by the tertiary or conjoining phase a loving Quickening Entity, 
should assume the visbile type of Godhead, and thus concentrate unto 
Himself the worship of all worlds. I can conceive no scheme more 
simply profound, more admirably suited to its complex purposes, than 
that He, in whom dwelt the fullness of the Godhead, bodily, should take 
the form of God, in order that unto Him every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven, and things in earth, and things in regions under the 
earth. Was not all this reasonably to have been looked for ? and tested 
afterwards by Scripture, in its frequent allusions to some visible phase 
of Deity, when the Lord God walked with Adam, and Enoch, and 
Abraham, and Peter, and James, and John — I ask, is it not the case ? 

The latter point remaining to be thus briefly touched upon, respects 
the probable shape to be assumed and worn, familiarly enough to be 
recognised as His, by Deity thus vouchsafing Himself visible. And 
here we must look down the forward stream of Time, and search among 
the creatures whom thereafter God should make, to arrive at some good 
reason for, some antecedent probability of, the form which he should 
thus frequently inhabit. Fire, for example, a pure and spirit-like 
nature, would not have been a guess unworthy of reason : but this^ 
besides its humbler economic uses, would endanger an idolatry of the 
natural emblem. So also would light be no irrational thought. And it 
is true that God might, and probably would, invest Himself in one or 
both of these pure essences, so seemingly congenial to a nature higher 
than ours : but then there would be some nucleus to the brilliancy and 
ihe burning ; these would be as a veil to the Divinity ; we should have 
need, before He were truly visible, that the veil were laid aside : we 
should have to shred away to the nucleus, which (and not the fire or 
light) would be the form of God. Similar objections, in themselves or 
in their idolatrizing tendencies, would lie against any such shape as a 
cloud, or a rainbow, or an angel (whatever such a being may resemble), 
or in fact any other conceivable creature, whether good as the angelic 
case or indifferent as that of the cloud, which the Deity, though assuming 
often, would nevertheless in every instance assume in conjunction with 
such his ordinary creature, and could not entirely monopolize. I mean ; 
if God had tlie shape of a cloud, or of a rainbow, common clouds ana 



THE GODHEAD VISIBLE. 479 

rainbows would come to be thought gods too. Reason would anticipate 
this objection to such created and too-favoured shapes: more; in every 
case, but one, he would be quite at a loss to look for some type, clearly 
apt and probable. That one case he might discern to be this. Known 
unto God are all things from the beginning to the end : and, in His fore- 
knowledge. Reason might have been enlightened to prophesy (as we 
shall hereafter see) that for certain wise and good ends one great family 
out of the myriads who rejoice in being called God's children, would in 
a most marked manner fall away from Him through disobedience ; and 
should thereby earn, if not the annihilation of their being, at least its 
endless separation from the Blessed. Manifestly, the wisdom and 
benevolence of God would be eager and swift to devise a plan for the 
redemption of so lost a race. Why He should permit their fall at all 
will be reverentially descanted on in its proper section ; meanwhile, how 
is it probable that God, first, by any theory consistently with truth and 
justice, could, and next by power and contrivance actually would, lift up 
again this sinful family from the pit of condemnation ? Reason is to 
search the question well : and after much thought, you will arrive at 
the truth that there was but one way probable. Rebellion against the 
Great and Self-existent Author of all things, must needfully involve 
infinite punishment; if only because He is infinite, and his laws of an 
eternal sanction. The problem then was, how to inflict the unbounded 
punishment thus claimed by justice for a transgressional condition, and 
yet at love's demand to set the prisoner free : how to be just, and simul- 
taneously justifier of the guilty. That was a question magnificently 
solved by God alone : magnificently about to be solved, as according to 
our argument seemed probable, by God Triune, in wondrous self- 
involving council. The solution would be rationally this. Himself, in 
his character of filial obedience, should pay the utter penalty to Himself 
in his character of paternal authority, whilst Himself in the character 
of quickening spirit, should restore the ransomed family from death to 
life, from the power of evil unto good. Was not this a most probable, 
a most reasonably probable scheme? was it not altogether wise and 
philosophical, as well as entirely generous and kind to wretched men? 
And (returning to our present topic), was it not antecedently to have 
been expected that God the Son (so to put it) should, in the shape He 
was thereafter to assume upon earth, appear upon the eternal throne of 
heaven? In a shape, however glorified and etherealized, with glistening 
countenance and raiment bright as the light, nevertheless resembling 



480 PROBABILITIES. 

that more humble form, the Son of Man, who was afterwards thus by a 
circle of probabilities to be made in the form of God ; in a shape, not 
liable, from its very sinfulness, to the deification either of other worlds 
or of this [hero-worship is another and a lower thing altogether ; we 
speak here of true idolatries :] — was it unlikely, I say, that in such a 
shape Deity should have deigned to become visible, and have blazed 
Manifested God, the central Sun of Heaven? — This probability, prior 
to our forth-flowing thoughts on the Incarnation, though in some 
measure anticipating them, will receive further light from the views 
soon to be set forth. I know not but that something is additionally due 
to the suggestion following ; namely : that, raise our swift imagination 
to what height we may, and stretch our searching reason to the utter- 
most, we cannot, despite of all inventive energies and powers of mind, 
conceive any shape more beautiful, more noble, more worthy for a 
rational intelligence to dwell in, more in one Homeric word eeoudli, 
than the glorified and ^therealized human form divine. Let this serve 
as Reason's short reply to any charge of anthropomorphism in the doc- 
trines of his creed : it was probable that God should be revealed to His 
creation ; and as to the form of any such revealed essence in any such 
infinite beginnings of His work, the most likely of all would appear to 
be that one, wherein He, in the ages then to come, was well resolved to 
earn the most glorious of all triumphs, the merciful reconciliation of 
everlasting justice with everlasting love, the wise and wondrous scheme 
of God forgiving sinners. 



THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 

It will now be opportune to attempt elucidation of one of the darkest 
and deepest riddles ever propounded to the finite understanding ; the d 
priori likelihood of evil : not, mind, its eternal existence, which is a false 
doctrine ; but its probable procession from the earliest created beings, 
which is a true one. 

At first sight, nothing could appear more improbable : nothing more 
inconsistent with the recognised attributes of God, than that error, pain, 
and sorrow should be mingled in His works. These, the spontaneous 
f>!Kspring of His love, one might (not all wisely) argue, must always be 
i.':nod and happy — because perfect as Himself. Because perfect?— 



THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 481 

Therein lies the fallacy, which reason will at once lay bare. Perfection 
IS attributable to no possible creature : perfection argues infinity, and 
infinity is one of the prerogatives of God. However good, " very good," 
a creation may be found, still it must, from essential finitude, fall short 
of that Best, which is in effect the only state purely unexceptionable. 
For instance, no creature can be imagined of a wisdom undiminished 
from the single true standard, God's wisdom : in other phrase, every 
creature must be more or less departed from wisdom, that is, verging 
towards folly. Again ; no creature can be presumed of a purity so 
spotless as to rank in an equality with that of the Almighty : in other 
words, neither man, nor angel, nor any other creature, can exist who is 
not more or less — I will not say impure, positively, but — unpure nega- 
tively. Thus, the birth-mark of creation must have been an inclination 
towards folly, and from purity. The mere idea of creatures would 
involve, as its great need-be, the qualifying clause that these emanations 
from perfection be imperfect ; and that these children of purity be liable 
to grow unpure. They must either be thus natured, or exist of the 
essence of God, that is, be other persons and phases of the Deity : such 
a case was possible certainly ; but, as we have already shown, not 
probable. And it were possible, that, in consequence of some redemp- 
tion such as we have spoken of, creatures might by ingraftation into 
God become so entirely part of Him — bone of bone, and flesh of flesh, 
and spirit of spirit — that an exhortation to such blest beings should 
reasonably run, "Be ye perfect." But this infinite munificence of the 
Godhead in redemption was not to be found among His bounties as 
Creator. It might indeed arise afterwards, as setting up again the fallen 
creature in some safe niche of Deity : and we now know it has arisen : 
"we are complete in Him." 

But this, though relevant, is a digression. Returning, and to produce 
some further argument against all creature perfectness ; let us consider 
how rational it seems to presuppose that the mighty Maker in his bound- 
less love should have willed to form a long chain of classes of existence 
more and more subordinated each to the other, each good of its kind and 
happy in its way, but yet all needfully more or less removed from the 
high standard of uncreate Perfection. These descending links, these 
graduations downwards, must involve a nearer or remoter approach to 
evil. Now, we must bear in mind that Evil is not a principle, but a 
perversion : it amounts merely to a denial, a limitation, a corruption of 
good, not to the dignity of its abstract antagonism. Familiarly, but 
Ff 41 



482 PROBABILITIES. 

fallaciously, we talk of the evil principle, the contradictory to good : we 
might as well talk of the nosologic principle, the contradictory to health ; 
or the darkness principle, the contradictory to light. They are contra- 
ries, but not contradictories : they have no positive, but only a relative 
existence. Good and evil are verily foes, but originally there was one 
cemented friendship: slender beginnings consequent on a creation, 
began to cause the breach : the civil war arose out of a state of primi- 
tive peace : images betray us into errors, or I might add with a protest 
against the risk of being misinterpreted, that like brothers turned to a 
deadly hate, they nevertheless sprang not originally out of two hostile 
and opposite hemispheres, but from one paternal hearth. Not, however, 
in any sense that God is the author of evil ; but that God's workman- 
ship, the finite creature, needfully perverted good. 

The origin of evil — that is, its birth — is a term true and clear : ori- 
ginal evil — that is, giving it no birth but an antedate to all created things, 
suffering it to run parallel with God and good from all eternity — this is 
a term false and misty. The probability that good would be warped, 
and grow deteriorate ; that wisdom would be dwindled down into less 
and less wisdom, or foolishness ; and power degenerated more and more 
towards imbecility ; must arise, directly a creature should spring out oi 
the Creator; and that, let astronomy or geology name any date they 
will : Adam is a definite date ; perhaps also the first day's — or period's — 
work : but the Beginning of Creation is undated. It would then, under 
this impression of the necessary defalcation of the creature from the 
strict straight line, be rational to look for deviations : it would be 
rational to presuppose that God — just, and good, and pure, and wise — 
should righteously be able to " charge his angels with folly," should 
verily declare that "the heavens are not pure in his sight." 

Further ; it would be a possible chance (which considerations soon 
succeeding would render even probable) that for a wise humiliation of 
the reasoning creature, and a just exaltation of the only Source of life 
and light and all things, one or more of such first created beings, or 
angels, should be suffered to fall, possibly from the vastest height, and 
at first by the slenderest beginnings, lower and lower into folly, impu- 
rity, and all other derelictions from the excellence of God. The lines, 
once unparalleled, would, without a check, go further apart for all eter- 
nity; albeit, the primal deviation arose in time. The aerolite, dropping 
slowly at first, increases in swiftness as it multiplies the fathoms of 
descent: and if the abyss be really bottomless, how impossible a 
check or a return. 



THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 433 

Some such terrible example would amount to a reasonable likelihood, 
if only for a lesson and a warning : to all intelligent hierarchs, be not 
high-minded, but fear; to all responsible beings, keep righteousness and 
reverence, and tempt not God ; to all the Virtues, Dominations, Obedi- 
ences, and due Subordinations of unknown glorious worlds, a loud and 
living exhortation to exercise, and not to let grow dim their spiritual 
energies, in efforts after goodness, wisdom, and purity. A creature 
state, to be happy, must be a progressive state: the capability of pro- 
gression argues lack, or a tendency from good : and progression itself 
needs a spur, lest indolence relapse towards evil. 

Additionally : we must remember that a creature's excellence before 
God is the reasonable service which he freely renders: freedom, dan- 
gerous prerogative, involves choice : and choice necessitates the possi- 
bility of error. The command to a rational intelligence would be, do 
this, and live ; do it not, and die : if thou doest, it is well done, good and 
faithful servant; thou hast mounted by thine own heaven-blest exertions 
to a higher approach towards infinite perfection ; enter thou into the joy, 
not merely of a creature, but of thy Lord. But, if thou doest not, it is 
wo to thee, unworthy hireling ; thou hast broken the tie that bound thee 
to thy Maker — obedience, the root of happiness ; thou livest on indeed, 
because the Former of all things cancelleth not nor endeth his beginning; 
but henceforth thine existence is, as a river which earthquakes have 
divorced from its bed, and instead of flowing on for ever through the fair 
pastures of peace and among the mountain roots of everlasting righte- 
ousness, thy downward course is shattery, headlong, turbulent, and 
destructive ; black-throated whirlpools here, miasmatic marshes there, a 
cataract, a shoal, a rapid ; until the remorseless stream, lashing among 
rocks which its own riot rendered sterile, pours its unresting waters into 
the thirsty sands of the Sahara. 

It was indeed probable (as since we know it to be true) that the 
generous Giver of all things would in the vast majority of cases 
minister such secret help to His weaker spiritual children, that, far from 
failing of continuous obedience, they should find it so unceasingly easier 
and happier that their very natures would soon come to be imbued with 
that pervading habit : and that thus, the longer any creature stood 
upright, the stronger should he rest in righteousness; until, at no very 
distant period, it should become morally impossible for him to fall. 
Such would soon be the condition of myriads, perhaps almost the whole, 
of heaven's innumerable host: and with respect to any darker Unit in 



■184 



PROBABILITIES. 



that multitude, for the good of all permitted to make early shipwreck of 
himself, simply by leaving his intelligence to plume its wings into pre- 
sumptuous flight, and by allowing his pristine goodness or wisdom to 
grow rusty from non-usage until that sacred panoply were eaten into 
holes; with respect to any such unhappy one, and all others (if others 
be) who should listen to his glozing, and make a common cause in his 
rebellion, where, I ask, is any injustice, or even unkindness done to him 
by Deity? Where is any moral improbability that such a traitor should 
be; or any just inconsistency chargeable on the attributes of God in 
consequence of such his being? Whom can he in reason accuse but 
jiimself for what he is? And what misery can such a one complain 
of, which is not the work of his own hands? And lest the Great 
Offender should urge against his God, why didst thou make me thus? — 
Is not the answer obvious, 1 made thee, but not thus. And on the 
rejoinder. Why didst thou not keep me as thou madest me? Is not the 
reply just, I made thee reasonable, I led thee to the starting place, I 
taught thee and set thee going well in the beginning ; thou art intelligent 
and free, and hast capacities of Mine own giving : wherefore didst thou 
throw aside My grace, and fly in the face of thy Creator? 

On the whole ; consider that T speak only of probabilities. There is 
a depth in this abyss of thought, which no human plummet is long 
enough to sound ; there is a maze in this labyrinth to be tracked by no 
mortal clue. It involves the truth, How unsearchable are his judgments : 
Thou hidest thy ways in the sea, and thy paths in the deep waters, and 
thy footsteps are not known. The weak point of man's argument lies 
in the suggested recollection, that doubtless the Deity could, if He 
would, have upheld all the universe from falling by his gracious power ; 
and that the attribute of love concludes that so He would. However, 
these three brief considerations further will go some way to solve the 
difiiculty, and to strengthen the weak point; first, there are other attri- 
butes besides love to run concurrently with it, as truth, justice, and 
unchangeableness : — Secondly, that grace is not grace, if manifested 
indiscriminately to all : and thirdly, that to our understanding at least 
there was no possible method of illustrating the amiabilities of Goodness, 
and the contrivances of Wisdom, but by the infused permission of some 
physical and moral evils: Mercy, benevolence, design, would in a 
universe of best have nothing to do ; that universe itself would grow 
stagnant, as incapable of progress; and the principal record of God's 
excellences, the book of redemption, would have been unwritten. Is 



COSMOGONY. 485 

not then the existence of evil justified in reason's calculation'? and was 
not such existence an antecedent probability ? 

Of these matters, thus curtly : it is time, in a short recapitulation, to 
reflect, that, from foregoing causes, mysteries were probable around the 
throne of heaven: and, as I have attempted to show, t,he mystery of 
imperfection, a concrete not an abstract, was likely to have sprung out 
of any creature universe. Reason perceives that a Gordion knot was 
likely to have become entangled ; in the intricate complexities of 
abounding good to be mingled needfully with its own deficiencies, cor- 
ruptions, and perversions : and this having been shown by Reason as 
anteriorly probable, its difficult involvements are now since cut by the 
sword of conquering Faith. 



COSMOGONY. 



These deep themes having been descanted on, however from their 
nature unsatisfactorily and with whatever human weakness, let us now 
endeavour mentally to transport ourselves to a period immediately ante- 
cedent to our own world's birth. We should then have been made aware 
that a great event was about to take place ; whereat, from its foreseen 
consequences, the hierarchies of heaven would be prompt to shout for 
joy, and the holy ones of God to sing for gratitude. It was no com- 
mon case of a creation ; no merely onemore orb, of third-rate unimpor- 
tance, amongst the million others of higher and more glorious praise : 
but it was a globe and a race about to be unique in character and fate, 
and in the far-spread results of their existence. On it and of its family 
was to be contrived the scene, wherein, to the admiration of the uni- 
verse, God himself in Person was going visibly to make head against 
corruption in ci*eation, and for ever thus to quench that possibility again : 
wherein He was marvellously to invent and demonstrate how Mercy 
and Truth should meet together, how Righteousness and Peace should 
kiss each other. There, was going to be set forth the wonderfully com- 
plicated battle-plan, by which, force countervailing force, and design 
converging all things upon one fixed point. Good, concrete in the crea- 
ture, should overwhelm not without strife and wounds Evil concrete in 
the creature, and all things, " even the wicked," should be seen harmo- 
r.iouslv blending in the glory of the attributes of God. The mythologic 

41* 



486 PROBABILITIES. 

Pan, TO ttSv the great Universal All, was deeply interested in the strug- 
gle : for the seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent's head ; not 
merely as respected the small orb about to be, but concerning heaven 
itself, the unbounded " haysh hamaim," wherefrom dread Lucifer was 
thus to be ejected. On the earth, a mere planet of humble lustre, which 
the prouder suns around might well despise, was to be exhibited this 
noble and analogous result ; the triumph of a lower intelligence, such 
as man, over a higher intelligence, such as angel : because, the former 
race, however frail, however weak, were to find their nature taken into 
God, and should have for their grand exemplar, leader and brother, the 
Very Lord of all arrayed in human guise ; while the latter, the angelic 
fallen mass, in spite of all their pristine wisdom and excellency, were to 
set up as their captain him, who may well and philosophically be 
termed their Adversary. 

This dark being, probably the mightiest of all mere creatures as the 
embodiment of corrupted good and perversion of an archangelic wisdom, 
was about to be suffered to fall victim to his own overtopping ambitions, 
and to drag with him a third part of the heavenly host — some tributary 
monarchs of the stars : thus he, and those his colleagues, should become 
a spectacle and a warning to all creatures else ; to stand for spirits' 
reading in letters of fire a deeply burnt-in record how vast a gulf there 
is between the Maker and the made ; how impassable a barrier between 
the derived intelligence and its infinite Creator. Such an unholy leader 
in rebellion against good — let us call him A or B, or why not for very 
euphony's sake Lucifer and Satanas? — such a corrupted excellence of 
heaven was to meet his final and inevitable disgrace to all eternity on 
the forthcoming battle-field of earth. Would it not be probable then 
that our world, soon to be fashioned and stocked with its teeming rea- 
sonable millions, should concentrate to itself the gaze of the universe, 
and, from the deeds to be done in it, should arrogate towards man a deep 
and fixed attention : that "the morning stars should sing together, and 
all the sons of God should shout for joy." Let us too, according to the 
power given to us, partake of such attention antecedently in some detail : 
albeit, as always, very little can be tracked of the length and breadth of 
our theme. 

What would probably be the nature of such world and of such crea- 
tures, in a physical point of view 1 and what, in a moral point of view ? 
It is not necessary to divide these questions : for the one so bears upon 
the other, or rather the latter so directs and pervades the former, that we 
may briefly treat of both as one. 



COSMOGONY. 



487 



The first probability would be, that, as the creature Man so to be 
abased and so to be exalted must be a responsible and reasonable being, 
every thing — with miraculous exceptions just enough to prove the rule 
— every thing around him should also be responsible and reasonable. 
In other words, that, with such exceptions as before alluded to, the whole 
texture of this world should bear to an inquisitive intellect the stamp of 
cause and eifect : whilst for the mass, such cause and effect should be 
so little intrusive, that their easier religion might recognise God in all 
things immediately, rather than mediately. For instance : take the 
cases of stone, and of coal ; the one so needful for man's architecture, 
the other for his culinary warmth. Now, however simple piety might 
well thank the Maker for having so stored earth with these for necessary 
uses ; they ought, to a more learned, though not less pious ken, to seem 
not to have been created by an effort of the Great Father qua stone, or 
qua coal. Such a view might satisfy the ordinary mind : but thinkers 
would see no occasion for a miracle ; when Christ raises Lazarus from 
the dead, it would have been a philosophical fault to have found the 
grave-clothes and swathing bandages ready loosened also. Unassisted 
man can do that : and unhelped common causes can generate stone and 
coal. The deposits of undated floods, the periodical currents of lava, 
the still and stagnant lake, and the furious up-bursting earthquake ; all 
these would be called into play, and not the unrequired, I had almost 
said unreasonable, energies, which we call miracle. An agglutination 
of shells, once peopled with life ; a crystallized lump of segregate min- 
erals, once in a molten state ; a mass of carbonated foliage and trunks 
of tropical trees, buried by long changes under the soil, whereover they 
had once waved greenly luxuriant ; these, and no other, should have 
been man's stone and coal. This instance affects the reasonableness of 
such material creation. Take another, bearing upon its analogous 
responsibilities. As there was to be warred in this world the contest 
between good and evil, it would be expectable that the crust of man's 
earth, anteriorly to man's existence on it, should be marked with some 
traces that the evil, though newly born so far as might regard man's 
own disobedience, nevertheless had existed antecedently. In other 
words : it was probable that there should exist geological evidences of 
sufferincr and death : that the gigantic ichthyosaurus should be found 
fixed in rock with his cruel jaws closed upon his prey: that the fearful 
iguanodon should leave the tracks of having desolated a whole region 
of its reptile tribes: that volcanoes should have ravaged fair continents 



488 PROBABILITIES. 

prolific of animal and vegetable life: that, in fine, though man's death 
came by man's sin, yet that death and sin were none of man's creating : 
he was only to draw down upon his head a preexistent wo, an ante- 
toppling rock. Observe then, that these geological phenomena are only 
illustrations of my meaning: and whether such parables be true or 
false, the argument remains the same : we never build upon the sand 
of simile, but only use it here and there for strewing on the floor. Still, 
I will acknowledge that the introduction of such fossil instances appears 
to me wisely thrown in as affects their antecedent probability, because 
ignorant comments upon scriptural cosmogony have raised the absurdest 
objections against the truth of scriptural science. There is not a tittle 
of known geological fact, which is not absolutely reconcilable with 
Genesis and Job. But this is a word by the way : although aimed not 
without design against one of the poor and paltry weak-holds of the 
infidel. 



ADAM. 



Remembering, then, that these are probabilities, and that the whole 
treatise purports to be nothing but a sketch, and not a finished picture, 
we have suggestively thus thrown out that the material world, man's 
home as man, was likely to have been prepared, as we posteriorly know 
it to be. Now, what of man's own person, circumstances, and individu- 
ality? Was it likely that the world should be stocked at once with 
many several races, or with one prolific seed ? with a specimen of every 
variety of the genus man, or with the one generic type capable of 
forming those varieties? — Answer. One is by far the likelier in itself, 
because one thing must needs be more probable than many things: 
additionally; Wisdom and Power are always economical, and where 
one will suit the purpose, superfluities are rejected. That this one seed, 
covering with its product a various globe under all imaginable differences 
of circumstance and climate, should, in the lapse of ages, generate many 
species of the genus Man, was antecedently probable. For example, 
morality, peace and obedience would exercise transforming powers: 
their opposites the like in an opposite way. We can well fancy a mild 
and gentle race, as the Hindoo, to spring from the former educationals : 
and a family with flashing eyes and strongly-visaged natures, as the 
Malay, from a state of hatred, war, and license. We can well conceive 



ADAM. 4g9 

that a tropical sun should carbonize some of that tender fabric the skin, 
adding also swift blood and fierce passions : while an arctic climate 
would induce a sluggish, stunted race. And, when to these consider- 
ations we add that of promiscuous unions, we arrive at the just like- 
lihood that the whole family of man, though springing from one root, 
should, in the course of generations, be what now we see it. 

Further. How should this prolific original, the first man, be created ? 
and for a name let us call him Adam ; a justly-chosen name enough, 
as alluding to his medium colour, ruddiness. Should he have been cast 
upon the ground an infant, utterly helpless, requiring miraculous aid 
and guidance at every turn ? Should he be originated in boyhood, that 
hot and tumultuous time, when the creature is most rash, and least 
qualified for self-government ? or should he be first discerned as an 
adult, in his prime, equal alike to obedience and rule, to moral control 
and moral energy ? 

Add also here ; is it probable there would be any needless interval 
placed to procreations ? or rather, should not such original seed be able 
immediately to fulfil the blank world call upon him, and as the greatly- 
teeming human father be found fitted from his birth to propagate his 
kind ? The questions answer themselves. 

Again. Should this first man have been discovered originally sur- 
rounded with all the appliances of an after-civilization, clad, and housed, 
and rendered artificial ? nor rather, in a noble and naturally royal 
aspect appear on the stage of life as king of the natural creation, sole 
warder of a garden of fruits, with all his food thus readily concocted, 
and an eastern climate tempered to his nakedness ? 

Now, as to the solitariness of this one seed. From what we have 
already mused respecting God's benevolence, it would seem probable 
that the Maker might not see it good that man should be alone. The 
seed, originally one, proved (as was likely) to resemble its great parent, 
God, and to be partitionable, or reducible into persons; though with 
reasonable differences as between creature and Creator. Woman — 
Eve, the living or life-giving — was likely to have sprung out of the 
composite seed, Man, in order to companionship and fit society. More- 
over, it were expectable that in the pattern creature, composite man, 
there should be involved some apt, mysterious typification of the same 
creature, after a fore-known fall restored, as in its perfect state of reunion 
with its Maker. A posteriori, the figurative notion is, that the Redeemed 
family, or mystical spouse, is incorporated in her husband, the Redeemer: 



490 PROBABILITIES. 

not so much in the idea of marriage, as (taking election into view") of a 
cocreation ; as it were rib of rib, and life woven into life, not copulated 
or conjoined, but immingled in the being. This is a mystery most 
worthy of deep searching ; a mystery deserving philosophic care, not 
less than the more unilluminate enjoyment of humble and believing 
Christians. I speak concerning Christ and his church. 



THE FAIL. 



There is a special fitness in the fact, long since known and now to 
be perceived probable, that if mankind should fail in disobedience, it 
should rather be through the woman than through the man. Because, 
the man, qua man, and the deputed head of all inferior creatures, was 
nearer to his Creator, than the woman; who, qua woman, proceeded 
out of man. She was, so to speak, one step further from God, ah origine, 
than man was; therefore, more liable to err and fall away. To my 
own mind, I confess, it appears that nothing is more anteriorly probable 
than the plain, scriptural story of Adam and Eve : so simple that the 
child delights in it ; so deep that the philosopher lingers there with an 
equal, but more reasonable joy. 

For, let us now come to the probabilities of a temptation ; and a fall ; 
and what temptation ; and how ordered. 

The heavenly intelligences beheld the model-man and model-woman, 
rational beings, and in all points "very good." The Adversary panted 
for the fray, demanding some test of the obedience of this new, favourite 
race. And the Lord God was willing that the great controversy, 
which he fore-knew, and for wise purposes allowed, should immediately 
commence. Where was the use of a delay? If you will reply, To 
give time to strengthen Adam's moral powers : I rejoin, he was made 
with more than enough of strength infused against any temptation not 
entering by the portal of his will : and against the open door of will 
neither time nor habits can avail. Moreover, the trial was to be 
exceedingly simple ; no difficult abstinence, for man might freely eat of 
every thing but one ; no natural passion tempted ; no exertion of intelli- 
gence requisite. Adam lived in a garden ; and his Maker, for proof of 
reasonable obedience, provides the most easy and obvious test of it — do 
not eat that apple. Was it, in reality, an improbable test ; an unsuita- 



THE FALL. 49I 

ble one? Was it not, rather, the likeliest in itself, and the fittest as 
addressed to the new-born, rational animal, which imagination could 
invent, or an amiable fore-knowledge of all things could desire? Had 
it been to climb some arduous height without looking back, or on no 
account to gaze upon the sun, how much less apt and easy of obedience ! 
Thus much for the test. 

Now, as to the temptation and its ordering. A creature, to be 
tempted fairly, must be tempted by another equal or lower creature ; 
and through the senses. If mere spirit strives with spirit, plus matter, 
the strife is unequal : the latter is clogged ; he has to fight in the net of 
Retiarius. But if both are netted, if both are spirit plus matter, (that 
is, material creatures,) there is no unfairness. Therefore, it would 
seem reasonable that the Adversary in person should descend from his 
mere spirituality into some tangible and humbled form. This could 
not well be man's, nor the semblance of man's : for the first pair would 
well know that they were all mankind : and, if the Lord God himself 
was accustomed to be seen of them as in a glorified humanity, it would 
be manifestly a moral incongruity to invest the devil in a similar form. 
It must, then, be the shape of some other creature ; as a lion, or a lamb, 
or — why not a serpent? Is there any improbability here? and not 
rather as apt an avatar of the sinuous and wily rebel, the dangerous, 
fascinating foe, as poetry at least, nay, as any sterner contrivance could 
invent? The plain fact is, that Reason — given keenness — might have 
guessed this also antecedently a likelihood. 

A few words more on other details probable to the temptation. Won- 
derful as it may seem to us with our present experience, in the case of 
the first woman it would scarcely excite her astonishment to be accosted 
in human phrase by one of the lower creatures; and in no other way 
could the tempter reach her mind. Much as Milton puts it, Eve sees 
a beautiful snake, eating, not improbably, of the forbidden apple. 
Attracted by a natural curiosity, she would draw near, and in a soft 
sweet voice the serpent, i. e. Lucifer in his guise, would whisper tempt- 
ation. It was likely to have been keenly managed. Is it possible, O 
fair and favoured mistress of this beautiful garden, that your Maker 
has debarred you from its very choicest fruit? Only see its potencies 
for good : I, a poor reptile, am instantly thereby endued with knowledge 
and the privilege of speech. Am I dead for the eating? — ye shall not 
surely die; but shall become as gods yourselves; and this your Maker 
knoweth. 



492 PROBABILITIES. 

The marvellous fruit, invested thus with mystery, and tinctured with 
the secret charm of a thing unreasonably, nay, harmfully, forbidden, 
would then be allowed silently to plead its own merits. It was good 
for food : a young creature's first thought. It was pleasant to the eyes : 
addressing a higher sense than mere bodily appetite, than mental predi- 
lection for form and colour which marks fine breeding among men. It 
was also to be desired to make one wise ; here was the climax, the 
great moral inducement which an innocent being might well be taken 
with ; irrespectively of the one qualification that this wisdom was to be 
plucked in spite of God. Doubtless, it were probable, that had man 
not fallen, the knowledge of good would never have been long withheld : 
but he chose to reap the crop too soon, and reaped it mixed with tares, 
good, and evil. 

I need not enlarge, in sermon form, upon the theme. It was probable 
that the weaker creature, Woman, once entrapped, she would have 
charms enough to snare her husband likewise : and the results thus 
perceived to have been likely, we have long since known for fact. 
That a depraved knowledge should immediately occasion some sort of 
clothing to be instituted by the great moral Governor, was likely : and 
there would be nothing near at hand, in fact nothing else suitable, but 
the skins of beasts. There is also a high probability that some sort of 
slaying should take place instantly on the fall, by way of reference to 
the coming sacrifice for sin ; and for a type of some imputed righteous- 
ness. God covered Man's evil nakedness with the skins of innocent 
slain animals : even so. Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, 
and whose sin is covered. 

With respect to restoration from any such fall. There seems a 
remarkable prior probability for it, if we take into account the empty 
places in heaven, the vacant starry thrones which sin had caused to be 
untenanted. Just as, in after years, Israel entered into the cities and 
the gardens of the Canaanite and other seven nations, so it was anteri- 
orly likely, would the ransomed race of Men come to be inheritors of 
the mansions among heavenly places, which had been left unoccupied 
by the fallen host of Lucifer. There was a gap to be filled : and 
probably there would be some better race to fill it. 



THE FLOOD. 493 



THE FLOOD. 

Themes like those past and others still to come, are so immense, that 
each might fairly ask a volume for its separate elucidation. A few 
seeds, pregnant with thought, are all that we have here space, or time, 
or power to drop beside the world's highway. The grand outlines ot 
our race command our first attention: we cannot stop to think and 
speak of every less detail. Therefore, now would I carry my com- 
panion across the patriarchal times at once to the era of the Deluge. 
Let us speculate, as hitherto, antecedently, throwing our minds as it 
were into some angelic prior state. 

If^ as we have seen probable, evil (a concretion always, not an 
abstraction) made some perceptible ravages even in the unbounded 
sphere of a heavenly creation, how much more rapid and overwhelming 
would its avalanche (once ill-commenced) be seen, when the site of its 
infliction was a poor band of men and women prisoned on a speck of 
earth. How likely was it that, in the lapse of no long time, the whole 
world should have been "corrupt before God, and filled with wicked- 
ness." How probable, that taking into account the great duration of 
pristine human life, the wicked family of man should speedily have 
festered up into an intolerable guiltiness. And was this dread result of 
the primal curse and disobedience to b • regarded as the Adversary's 
triumph ? Had this Accuser — the Saxon word is Devil — had this Slan- 
derer of God's attribute then really beaten Good ? or was not rather all 
this swarming sin an awful vindication to the universe of the great 
need-be that God unceasingly must hold his creature up lest he fall, 
and that out of Him is neither strength nor wisdom ? Was Deity, either 
in Adam's case or this, baffled — nor rather justified? Was it an exper- 
iment which had really failed ; nor rather one which, by its very seem- 
ing failure, proved the point in question, the misery of creatures when 
separate from God? Yea, the evil one was being beaten down beneath 
his very trophies in sad Tarpeian triumph: through conquest and his 
children's sins heightening his own misery. 

Let us now advert to a few of the anterior probabilities affecting this 
evil earth's catastrophe. It is not competent to us to trench upon such 
ulterior views as are contained in the idea of types relatively to anti- 
types. Neither will we take the fanciful or poetical aspect of com- 
ing calamity, that earth, befouled with guilt, was likely to be washed 

42 



494 PROBABILITIES. 

ing calamity, that earth, befouled with guilt, was likely to be washed 
clean by water. It is better to ask, as more relevant, in what other way 
more benevolent than drowning could, short of miracle, the race be 
made extinct ? They were all to die in their sins, and swell in another 
sphere the miserable hosts of Satan. There was no hope for them, for 
there was no repentance. It was infinitely probable that God's long- 
suffering had worn out every reasonable effort for their restoration. 
They were then to die; but how ? — in the least painful manner possible. 
Intestine wars, fevers, famines, a general burning-up of earth and all its 
millions, were any of these preferable sorts of death to that caused by 
the gradual rise of water, with hope of life accorded still even to the 
last gurgle? Assuredly, if "the tender mercies of the wicked are 
cruel," the judgments of the Good one are tempered well with mercy. 

Moreover, in the midst of this universal slaughter there was one good 
seed to be preserved : and, as Heaven never works a miracle where 
common cause will suit the present purpose, it would have been incon- 
sistent to have extirpated the wicked by any such means as must demon- 
strate the good to have been saved only by super-human agency. 

The considerations of humanity, and of the divine less-intervention, 
add that of the natural and easy agency of a long-commissioned comet. 
No " Deus e machina " was needed for this effort : one of His ministers 
of flaming fire was charged to call forth the services of water. This 
was an easy and majestic interference. Ever since man fell — yea, 
ages before it — the omniscient eye of God had foreseen all things that 
should happen: and his ubiquity had, possibly from The Beginning, 
sped a comet on its errant vvay, which at a calculated period was to 
serve to wash the globe clean of its corruptions : was to strike the orbit 
of earth just in the moment of its passage, and disturbing by attraction 
the fountains of the great deep, was temporarily to raise their level. 
Was not this a just, a sublime, and a likely plan? Was it not a mer. 
ciful, a perfect, and a worthy way? Who should else have buried the 
carcases on those fierce battle-fields, or the mouldering heaps of pesti- 
lence and famine? — But, when at Jehovah's summons, heaving to the 
comet's mass, the pure and mighty sea rises indignant from its bed, by 
drowning to cleanse the foul and mighty land — how easy an engulfing 
of the corpses ; how awful that universal burial ; how apt their monu- 
mental epitaph written in water, "The wicked are like the troubled sea 
that cannot rest;" how dread the everlasting requiem chanted for the 
wliehned race by the waves roaring above them: yea, roaring above 



NOAH. 495 

them still ! for in that chaotic hour it seems probable to reason that the 
land changed place with ocean ; thus giving the new family of man a 
fresh young world to live upon. 



NOAH. 

When the world, about to grow so wicked, was likely thus to have 
been cleansed, and so renewed, the great experiment of man's possible 
righteousness was probable to be repeated in another form. We may 
fancy some high angelic mind to have gone through some such line of 
thought as this, respecting the battle and combatants. Were those 
champions, Lucifer and Adam, really fit to be matched together? Was 
the tourney just; were the weapons equal; was it, after all, a fair 
fight ? — on one side, the fallen spirit, mighty still, though fallen, subtlest, 
most unscrupulous, most malicious, exerting every energy to rear a 
rebel kingdom against God ; on the other, a new-born, inexperienced, 
innocent, and trustful creature, a poor man vexed with appetites, and as 
naked for absolute knowledge in his mind as for garments on his body. 
Was it, in this view of the case, an equal contest? were the weapons of 
that warfare matched and measured fairly? 

Some such objection, we may suppose, might seem to have been 
admissible, as having a show at least of reason : and, after the world 
was to have been cleansed of all its creatures in the manner I have 
mentioned, a new champion is armed for the conflict, totally different in 
every respect; and to reason's view vastly superior. 

This time, the Adam of renewed earth is to be the best and wisest, 
nay, the only good and wise one of the whole lost family : a man, with the 
experience of full six hundred years upon his hoary brow, with the 
unspeakable advantage of having walked with God all those long-drawn 
centuries, a patriarch of twenty generations, recognised as the one great 
and faithful witness, the only worshipper and friend of his Creator. 
Could a finer sample be conceived ? was not Noah the only spark of 
spiritual "consolation" in the midst of earth's dark death? and was not 
he the best imaginable champion to stand against the wiles of the devil ? 
Verily, reason might have guessed, that if Deity saw fit to renew the 
fight at all, the representative of man should have been Noah. 

Before we touch upon the immediate fall of this new Adam also, at a 
time when God and reason had deserted him, it will be more orderly to 



496 PROBABILITIES. 

allude to the circumstances of his preservation in the flood. How, in 
such a hurlyburly of the elements, should the chosen seed survive? 
No house, nor hill-top, no ordinary ship would serve the purpose : still 
less the unreasonable plan of any cavern hermetically sealed, or any 
aerial chariot miraculously lifted up above the lower firmament. To 
use plain and simple words, I can fancy no wiser method than a some- 
thing between a house and a diving-bell ; a vessel, entirely storm-tight 
and water-tight, which nevertheless for necessary air should have an 
open window at the top : say, one a cubit square. This, properly 
hooded against deluging rain, and supplied with such helps to ventila- 
tion as leathern pipes, air tunnels and similar appliances, would not be 
an impracticable method. However, instead of being under water as a 
diving-bell, the vessel would be better made to float upon the rising 
flood, and thus continually keeping its level, would be ready to strike 
land as the waters assuaged. 

Now, as to the size of this ark, this floating caravan, it must needs 
be very large ; and also take a great time in building. For, suffering 
cause and effect to go on without a new creation, it was reasonable to 
suppose that the man, so launching as for another world on the ocean 
of existence, would take with him (especially if God's benevolence so 
ordered it) all the known appliances of civilized life ; as well as a pair 
or two of every creature he could collect, to stock withal the renewed 
earth according to their various excellences in their kinds. The lengthy, 
arduous, and expensive preparation of this mighty ark — a vessel which 
must include forests of timber and consume generations in building ; 
besides the world-be-known collection of all manner of strange animals 
for the stranger fancy of a fanatical old man ; not to mention also the 
hoary Preacher's own century of exortations : with how great moral 
force all this living warning would be calculated to act upon the world 
of wickedness and doom! Here was the great ante-diluvian potentate, 
Noah, a patriarch of ages, wealthy beyond our calculations — (for how 
else without a needless succession of miracles could he have built and 
stocked the ark?) — a man of enormous substance, good report, and 
exalted station, here was he for a hundred and twenty years engaged 
among crowds of unbelieving workmen, in constructing a most extrav- 
agant ship, which, forsooth, filled with samples of all this world's stores, 
was to sail with our only good family in search of a better. Moreover, 
Noah here declares that our dear old mother-earth is to be destroyed 
for her iniquities by rain and sea : and he exhorts us by a solid evi- 



BABEL 



497 



dence of his own faith at least, if by nothing else, to repent, and turn to 
him, whom Abel, Seth, and Enoch, as well as this good Noah, represent 
as our Maker. Would not such sneers and taunts be probable : would 
they not amply vindicate the coming judgment? Was not the "long- 
suffering of God " likely to have thus been tried '• while the ark was 
preparing?" and when the catastrophe should come, had not that evil 
generation been duly warned against it ? On the whole, it would have 
been Reason's guess that Noah should be saved as he was ; that the ark 
should have been as we read of it in Genesis; and that the very immen- 
sity of its construction should have served for a preaching to mankind. 
As to any idea that the ark is an unreasonable (some have even said 
ridiculous) incident to the deluge, it seems to me to have furnished a 
clear case of antecedent probability. 

Lastly: Noah's fall was very likely to have happened: not merely 
in the theological view of the matter, as an illustration of the trutli that 
no human being can stand fast in righteousness: but from the just con- 
sideration that he imported with him the seeds of an impure state of 
society, the remembered luxuries of that old world. For instance, 
among the plants of earth which Noah would have preserved for 
future insertion in the soil, he could not have well forgotten the gener- 
ous, treacherous Vine. That to a righteous man, little usfed to all unhal- 
lowed sources of exhilaration, this should have been a stepping-stone 
to a defalcation from God, was likely. It was probable in itself, and 
shows the honesty as well as the verisimilitude of Scripture to read, that 
"Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and he 
drank of the wine, and was drunken." There was nothing here but 
what, taking all things into consideration, Reason might have previously 
guessed. Why then withhold the easier matter of an afterward belief? 



BABEL. 



This book ought to be read, as mentally it is written, with at the end 
of every sentence one of those et ceteras, which the genius of a Coke 
interpreted so keenly of the genius of a Littleton : for, far more remains 
on each subject to be said, than in any one has been attempted. 

Let us pass on to the story of Babel : I can conceive nothing more a 
priori probable than the account we read in Scripture. Briefly consider 
the matter. A multitude of men, possibly the then whole human 
G G 42* 



498 PROBABILITIES. 

family, once more a fallen race, emigrate towards the East, and come 
to a vast plain in the region of Shinar, afterwards Chaldsea. Fertile, 
well-watered, apt for every mundane purpose, it yet wanted one great 
requisite. The degenerate race "put not their trust in God:" they did 
not believe but that the world might some day be again destroyed by 
water : and they required a point of refuge in the possible event of a 
second deluge from the broken bounds of ocean and the windows of the 
skies. They had come from the West; more strictly the North-west, a 
land of mountains, as they deemed them, ready-made refuges: and 
their scheme, a probable one enough, was to construct some such moun- 
tain artificially, so that its top might reach the clouds, as did the summit 
of Ararat. This would serve the twofold purpose of outwitting any 
further attempt to drown them, and of making for themselves a proud 
name upon the earth. So, the Lord God, in his etherealized human 
form (having taken counsel with His own divine compeers), coming in 
the guise wherein He was wont to walk with Adam and with Enoch 
and his other saints of men, "came down and saw the tower:" truly. 
He needed not have come, for ubiquity was his, and omniscience ; but 
in the days when God and man were (so to speak) less chronologically 
divided than as now, and while yet the trial-family was young, it does 
not seem unlikely that He should. God then, in his aspect of the Head 
of all mankind, took notice of that dangerous and unholy combination : 
and He made within His Triune Mind the wise resolve to break their 
bond of union. Omniscience had herein a view to ulterior consequences 
benevolent to man, and He knew that it would be a wise thing for tlie 
future world, as well as a discriminative check upon the race then 
living, to confuse the universal language into many discordant dialects. 
Was this in any sense an improbable or improper method of making 
"the devices of the wicked to be of none effect, and of laughing to 
scorn the counsels of the mighty?" Was it not to have been expected 
that a fallen race should be disallowed the combinative force necesrary 
to a common language, but that such force should be dissipated ind 
diverted for moral usages into many tongues ? — There they were, all 
the chiefs of men congregated to accomplish a vast, ungodly scheme : 
iind interposing Heaven to crush such insane presumption — and witlial 
t'nereafter designing to bless by arranging through such means tlie 
future interchange of commerce and the enterprise of nationalities — 
He, in his Trinity, was not unlikely to have said, "Let us go down, 
and confound their lansua^e." What better mode could have been 



JOB. 499 

devised to scatter mankind, and so to people the extremities of earth? 
In order that the various dialects should crystallize apart, each in its 
discriminative lump, the nucleus of a nation ; that thereafter the world 
might be able no longer to unite as one man against its Lord, but by 
conflicting interests, the product of conflicting languages, might give 
to good a better chance of not being altogether overwhelmed ; that, 
though many "a multitude might go to do evil," it should not thence- 
forward be the whole consenting family of man ; but that, here by one 
and there by one, the remembrance of God should be kept extant, and 
evil no longer acquire an accumulated force, by having all the world 
one nation. 



JOB. 

Every scriptural incident and every scriptural worthy deserves its 
own particular discussion : and might easily obtain it. For example ; 
the anterior probability that human life in patriarchal times should have 
been very much prolonged, was obvious; from consideration of — 1, the 
benevolence of God ; 2, the inexperience of man ; and 3, the claim so 
young a world would hold upon each of its inhabitants : whilst Holy 
Writ itself has prepared an answer to the probable objection, that the 
years were lunar years, or months; by recording that Arphaxad and 
Salah and Eber and Peleg and Reu and Serug and Nahor, descendants 
of Shem, each had children at the average age of two-and-thirty, and 
yet the lives of all varied in duration from a hundred and fifty years to 
five hundred. And many similar credibilities might be alluded to: 
what shall I say of Abraham's sacrifice, of Moses and the burning 
bush, of Jonah also, and Elisha, and of the prophets? for the time 
would fail me to tell how probable and simple in each instance is its 
deep and marvellous history. There is food for philosophic thought in 
every page of ancient Jewish Scripture scarcely less than in those of 
primitive Christianity : here, after our fashion, we have only touched 
upon a sample. 

The opening scene to the book of Job has vexed the faitli of many 
very needlessly : to my mind, nothing was more likely to have literally 
and really happened. It is one of those few places where we get an 
insight into what is going on elsewhere : it is a lifting off" the curtain o* 
eternity for once, revealing the magnificent simplicities constantly pre* 



500 PROBABILITIES. 

sented in the halls of heaven. And I am moved to speak about it here, 
because I think a plain statement of its sublime probabilities will be 
acceptable to many : especially if they have been harassed by the 
doubts of learned men respecting the authorship of that rare history. 
It signifies nothing who recorded the circumstances and conversations, 
so long as they were true, and really happened : given power, opportu- 
nity, and honesty, a life of Dr. Johnson would be just as fair in fact, if 
written by Smollett, as by Boswell, or himself. Whether then Job, the 
wealthy prince of Uz, or Abraham, or Moses, or Elisha, or Eliphaz, or 
whoever else, have placed the words on record, there they stand, true ; 
and the whole book in all its points was anteriorly likely to have been 
decreed a component part of revelation. Without it, there would have 
been wanting some evidence of a godly worship among men through 
the long and dreary interval of several hundred years : there would 
never have been given for man's help the example of a fortitude, and 
patience, and trust in God most brilliant ; of a faith in the resurrection 
and redeemer, signal and definite beyond all other texts in Jewish 
Scripture : as well as of a human knowledge of God in his works 
beyond all modern instance. However, the excellences of that narra- 
tive are scarcely our theme : we return to the starting-post of its proba- 
bility, especially with ^'eference to its supernatural commencement. 
What we have shown credible, many pages back, respecting good and 
evil and the denizens of heaven, finds a remarkable after-proof in the 
two first chapters of Job ; and for some such reason, by reference, these 
two chapters were themselves anteriorly to have been expected. 

Let us see what happened : 

" There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves 
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said 
unto Satan, whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered the Lord, and 
said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down 
in it. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant 
Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright 
man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil ? Then Satan answered 
the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made 
a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on 
every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance 
is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all 
he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto 
Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put 



JOB. 501 

not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the 
Lord."— [Job 1. 6-13.] 

It is a most stately drama : any paraphrase would spoil its dignity, 
its quiet truth, its unpretending, yet gigantic lineaments. Note : in 
allusion to our views of evil, that Satan also comes among the sons of 
God : note, the generous dependence placed by a generous Master on 
his servant well-upheld by that Master's own free grace : note, Satan's 
constant imputation against piety when blessed of God with worldly 
wealth. Doth he serve for naught? I can discern no cause wherefore 
all this scene should not have truly happened ; not as in vision of some 
holy man, but as in fact. Let us read on, before further comment : 

"Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present 
themselves before the Lord, aifd Satan came also among them to present 
himself before the Lord. And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence com- 
est thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and 
fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lord 
said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is 
none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that fear, 
eth God and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, 
although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. 
And Satan answered the Lord, and said. Skin for skin, yea, all that a 
man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and 
touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. And 
the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his 
life. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote 
Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown." 

Some such scene, displaying the devil's malice, slandering sneers, 
and permitted power, recommends itself to my mind as antecedently to 
have been looked for: in order that we might know from what quarter 
many of life's evils come ; with what aims and ends they are directed ; 
what limits are opposed to our foe; and Who is on our side. We 
needed some such insight into the heavenly places ; some such hint uf 
what is continually going on before the Lord's tribunal; we wanted this 
plain and simple setting forth of good and evil in personal encounter^ 
of innocence awhile given up to malice for its chastening and its tri- 
umph. Lo, all this so probable scene is here laid open to us, and many, 
against reason, disbelieve it ! 

Note, in allusion to our after-theme, the locus of heaven, that there 
is some such usual place of periodical gathering. Note, the open 



502 PROBABILITIES. 

uiichiding loveliness dwelling in the Good One's words, as contrasted 
with the subtle, slanderous hatred of the Evil. And then the vulgar 
proverb, Skin for skin : this pious Job is so intensely selfish, that let 
him lose what he may, he heeds it not ; he cares for nothing out of his 
own skin. And there are many more such notabilities. 

Why did I produce these passages at length? For their Doric 
simplicity ; for their plain and masculine features ; for their obvious 
truthfulness ; for their manifest probability as to fact, and expectability 
previously to it. Why on earth should they be doubted in their literal 
sense? and were they not more likely to have happened than to have 
been invented ? We have no such geniuses now as this writer must 
have been, who by the pure force of imagination could have created 
that tableau. Milton had Job to go to. Simplicity is proof presumptive 
in favour of the plain inspiration of such passages : for the plastic mind 
which could conceive so just a sketch, would never have rested satis- 
fied, without having painted and adorned it picturesquely. Such rare 
flights of fancy are always made the most of. 

One or two thoughts respecting Job's trial. That he should at last 
give way, was only probable : he was, in short, another Adam, and had 
another fall ; albeit he wrestled nobly. Worthy was he to be named 
among God's chosen three, "Noah, Daniel, and Job:" and worthy that 
the Lord should bless his latter end. This word brings me to the point 
I wish to touch on ; the great compensation which God gave to Job. 

Children can never be regarded as other than individualities: and 
notwithstanding Eastern feelings about increase in quantity, its quality 
is, after all, the question for the heart. I mean that many children to be 
born, is but an inadequate return for many children dying. If a father 
loses a well-beloved son, it is small recompense of that aching void that 
he gets another. For this reason of the affections, and because I sup- 
pose that thinkers have sympathized with me in the difficulty, I wish to 
say a word about Job's children, lost and found. It will clear away 
vriiat is to some minds a moral and affectionate objection. Now, this is 
the state of the case. 

The patriarch is introduced to us as possessing so many camels, and 
oxen, and so forth ; and ten children. All these are represented to him 
by witnesses, to all appearance credible, as dead ; and he mourns for 
his great loss accordingly. Would not a merchant feel to all intents 
and purposes a ruined man, if he received a clear intelligence from 
different parts of the world at once that all his ships and warehouses 



JOB. 503 

had been destroyed by hurricanes and fire? Faith given, patience fol- 
lows : and the trial is morally the same, whether the news be true or 
false. Remarkably enough, after the calamitous time is past, when the 
good man of Uz is discerned as rewarded by heaven for his patience by 
the double of every thing once lost — his children remain the same in 
number, ten. It seems to me quite possible that neither camels, &c., 
nor children, really had been killed. Satan might have meant it so, 
and schemed it; and the singly-coming messengers believed it all, as 
also did the well-enduring Job. But the scriptural word does not go to 
say that these things happened ; but that certain emissaries said they 
happened. I think the devil missed his mark: that the messengers 
were scared by some abortive diabolic eiforts ; and that, (with a natural 
increase of camels, &c., meanwhile,) the patriarch's paternal heart was 
more than compensated at the last, by the restoration of his own dear 
children. They were dead, and are alive again ; they were lost, and 
are found. Like Abraham returning from Mount Calvary with Isaac, 
it was the Resurrection in a figure. 

If to this view objection is made, that, because the boils of Job were 
real, therefore, similarly real must be all his other evils ; I reply, that 
in the one temptation, the suffering was to be mental ; in the other, 
bodily. In the latter case, positive, personal pain, was the gist of the 
matter: in the former, the heart might be pierced, and the mind be 
overwhelmed, without the necessity of any such incurable affliction as 
children's deaths amount to. God's mercy may well have allowed the 
evil one to overreach himself; and when the restoration came, how 
double was the joy of Job over those ten dear children. 

Again, if any one will urge that, in the common view of the case, 
Job at the last really has twice as many children as before, for that he 
has ten old ones in heaven, and ten new ones on earth : I must, in 
answer, think that explanation as unsatisfactory to us, as the verity of 
it would have been to Job. Affection, human affection, is not so numer- 
ically nor vicariously consoled : and it is, perhaps, worth while here to 
have thrown out (what I suppose to be) a new view of the case, if only 
to rescue such wealth as children from the infidel's sneer of being con- 
founded with such wealth as camels. Moreover, such a paternal reward 
was anteriorly more probable. 



504 PROBABILITIKS, 

JOSHUA. 

How many of our superficial thinkers have been staggered at the 
great miracle recorded of Joshua; and how few, even of the deeper 
sort, comparatively, may have discerned its aptness, its science, and its 
anterior likelihood: "Sun! stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and thou, 
moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Now, consider, for we hope to vindi- 
cate even this stupendous event from the charge of improbability. 

Baal and Ashtaroth, chief idols of the Canaanites, were names for 
sun and moon. It would manifestly be the object of God and His 
ambassador to cast utter scorn on such idolatry. And what could be 
more apt than that Joshua, commissioned to extirpate the corrupted race, 
should miraculously be enabled, as it were, to bind their own gods to 
aid in the destruction of such votaries? 

Again : what should Joshua want with the moon for daylight, to help 
him to rout the foes of God more fiercely? Why not, according to the 
astronomical ignorance of those days, let her sail away, unconsorted by 
the sun, far beyond the valley of Ajalon? There was a reason, here, 
of secret, unobtruded science : if the sun stopped, the moon must stop 
too; that is to say, both apparently: the fact being that the earth must, 
for the while, rest on its axis. This, I say, is a latent, scientific hint ; 
and so, likewise, is the accompanying mention as a fact, that the Lord 
immediately " rained great stones out of heaven" upon the flying host. 
For would it not be the case that, if the diurnal rotation of earth were 
suddenly to stop, the impetus of motion would avail to raise high into 
the air by centrifugal force, and fling down again by gravity, such 
unanchored things as fragments of rock ? 

Once more : our objector will here perhaps inquire. Why not then 
command the earth to stop — and not the sun and moon ? if thus probably 
Joshua or his Inspirer knew better ? Answer. Only let a reasonable 
man consider what would have been the moral lesson both to Israelite 
and to Canaanite, if the great successor of Moses had called out, incom- 
prehensibly to all, "Earth, stand thou still on thine axis;" — and lo ! as 
if in utter defiance of such presumption, and to vindicate openly the 
neathen gods against the Jewish, the very sun and moon in heaven 
stopped, and glared on the offendei*. I question whether such a noon- 
day miracle might not have perverted to idolatry the whole believing 
host : and almost reasonably too. The strictly philosophical terms 



JOSHUA. 505 

would have entirely nullified the whole moral influence. God in his 
word never suffers science to hinder the progress of truth : a worldly 
philosophy does this almost in every instance, darkening knowledge with 
a cloud of words : but the science of the Bible is usually concealed 
in some neighbouring hint quite handy to the record of the phenomena 
expressed in ordinary language. In fact, for all common purposes, 
no astronomer finds fault with such phrases as the moon rising, or 
the sun setting : he speaks according to the appearance, though he knows 
perfectly well that the earth is the cause of it, and not the sun or moon. 
Carry this out in Joshua's case. 

On the whole, the miracle was very plain, very comprehensible, and 
very probable. It had good cause : for Canaan felt more confidence in 
the protection of his great and glorious Baal, than stiff-necked Judah 
in his barely-seen divinity : and surely it was wise to vindicate the true 
but invisible God by the humiliation of the false and far-seen idol. This 
would constitute to all nations the quickly-rumoured proof that Jehovah 
of the Israelites was God in heaven above as well as on the earth 
beneath. And, considering the peculiar idolatries of Canaan, it seems 
to me that no miracle could have been better placed and better timed — 
in other words, anteriorly more probable — than the command of obedi- 
ence to the sun and to the moon. I suppose that few persons who read 
this book will be unaware, that the circumstance is alluded to as well 
in that honest heathen, old Herodotus, as in the learned Jew Josephus. 
The volumes are not near me for reference to quotations : but such is 
fact : it will be found in Herodotus, about the middle of Euterpe, con- 
nected with an allusion to the analogous case of Hezekiah. 

No miracles, on the whole (to take one after-view of the matter), 
could have been better tested : for two armies (not to mention all sur- 
rounding countries) must have seen it plainly and clearly : if then it 
had never occurred, what a very needless exposure of the falsity of the 
Jewish Scriptures! These were open, published writings, accessible to 
all : Cyrus and Darius and Alexander read them, and Ethiopian 
eunuchs ; Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, with all other nations of the 
earth, had free access to those records. Only imagine if some recent 
history of England, Adolphus's, or Stebbing's, contained an account of 
a certain day in George the Fourth's reign having had twenty-four 
hour's daylight instead of the usual admixture ; could the intolerable 
falsehood last a minute ? Such a placard would be torn away from the 
records of the land the moment a rash hand had fixed it there. But, if 

43 



506 PROBABILITIES. 

the matter were fact, how could any historian neglect it? — In one sense, 
the very improbability of such a marvel being recorded, argues the 
probability of it having actually occurred. 

Much more might here be added : but our errand is accomplished, if 
any stumbling-block had been thus easily removed from some erring 
thinker's path. Surely, we hare given him some reason for faith's due 
acceptance of Joshua's miracle. 



THE INCARNATION. 

In touching some of the probabilities of our blessed Lord's career, it 
would be difficult to introduce and illustrate the subject better, than by 
the following anecdote. Wheoce it is derived, has escaped my memory ; 
but I have a floating notion that it is told of Socrates in Xenophon or 
Plato. At any rate, by way of giving fixity thereto and picturesque- 
ness, let us here report the story as of the Athenian Solomon : 

Surrounded by his pupils, the great heathen Reasoner was being 
questioned and answering questions : in particular respecting the proba- 
bility that the universal God would be revealed to his creatures. " What 
a glorious King would he appear!" said one, possibly the brilliant Alci- 
biades : "What a form of surpassing beauty!" said another, not 
unlikely the softer Crito. " Not so, my children," answered Socrates. 
" Kings and the beautiful are few, and the God, if he came on earth as 
an exemplar, would in shape and station be like the greater number." 
"Indeed, Master? then how should he fail of being made a King of 
men, for his goodness, and his majesty, and wisdom ?" " Alas ! my 
childi'en," was pure Reason's just rejoinder," ol -nKuovti kokoI, most men 
are so wicked that they would hate his purity, despise his wisdom, and 
as for his majesty, they could not truly see it. They might indeed 
admire for a time, but thereafter (if the God allowed it), they would 
even hunt and persecute and kill him." " Kill him !" exclaimed the 
eager group of listeners; " kill Him? how should they, how could they, 
how dare they kill God ?" " I did not say, kill God," would have been 
wise Socrates's reply, "for God existeth ever: but men in enmity and 
envy might even be allowed to kill that human form wherein God 
walked for an ensample. That they could, were God's humility : that 
they should, were their own malice : that they dared, were their own 
grievous sin and peril of destruction. Yea," went on the keen-eyed 



I 



THE INCARNATION. 



507 



sage, "men would slay him by some disgraceful death, some lingering, 
open, and cruel death, even such as the death of slaves!" — Now slaves, 
when convicted of capital crime, were always crucified. 

Whatever be thought of the genuineness of the anecdote, its uses are 
the same to us. Reason might have arrived at the salient points of 
Christ's career, and at His crucifixion ! 

I will add another topic : How should the God on earth arrive there ? 
We have shown that His form would probably be sucli as man's ; but 
was he to descend bodily from the atmosphere at the age of full-grown 
perfection, or to rise up out of the ground with earthquakes and fire, or 
to appear on a sudden in the midst of the market-place, or to come with 
legions of his heavenly host to visit his Temple ? There was a wiser 
way than these, more reasonable, probable, and useful. Man required 
an exemplar for every stage of his existence up to the perfection of his 
frame. The infant, and the child, and the youth, would all desire the 
human-God to understand their eras; they would all, if generous and 
such as he would love, long to feel that He has sympathy with them in 
every early trial, as in every later grief. Moreover, the God coming 
down with supernatural glories or terrors would be a needless expense 
of ostentatious power. He, whose advent is intended for the encour- 
agement of men to exercise their reason and their conscience ; whose 
exhortation is "he that hath ears to hear, let him hear ;" that pure BeinCT, 
who is the chief preacher of Humility, and the great teacher of man's 
responsible condition — surely, he would hardly come in any way 
astoundingly miraculous, addressing his advent not to faith, but to sight, 
and challenging the impossibility of unbelief by a galaxy of spiritual 
wonders. Yet, if He is to come at all — and a word or two of this here- 
after — it must be either in some such strange way ; or in the usual human 
way ; or in a just admixture of both. As the first is needlessly over- 
whelming to the responsible state of man, so the second is needlessly 
derogatory to the pure essence of God ; and the third idea would seem 
to be itiost probable. Let us guess it out. Why should not this highest 
Object of faith and this lowest Subject of obedience be born, seemingly 
by human means, but really by divine? Why should there not be 
found some unspotted holy virgin, betrothed to a just man and soon to be 
his wife, who, by the creative power of Divinity, should miraculously 
conceive the shape divine, which God himself resolved to dwell m? 
Why should she not come of a lineage and family which for centuries 
before had held such expectation? Why should not the just man, her 



508 PROBABILITIES. 

affianced, who had never known her yet, being warned of God in a 
dream of this strange, immaculate conception, "fear not to take unto 
him Mary his wife," lest the unbelieving world should breathe slander 
on her purity, albeit he should really know her not until after the Holy 
Birth. There is nothing unreasonable here ; every step is previously 
credible : and invention's self would be puzzled to devise a better 
scheme. The Virgin-born would thus be a link between God and man, 
the great Mediator: his natures would fulfil every condition required 
of their double and their intimate conjunction. He would have arrived 
at humanity without its gross beginnings, and have veiled his Godhead 
for a while in a pure though mortal tenement. He would have partici- 
pated in all the tenderness of woman's nature, and thus have reached 
the keenest sensibilities of men. 

Themes such as these are inexhaustible : and I am perpetually con- 
scious of so much left unsaid, that at every section I seem to have said 
next to nothing. Nevertheless, let it go ; the good seed yet shall germi- 
nate. "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after 
many days." 

It may to some minds be a desideratum, to allude to the anterior 
probability that God should come in the flesh. Much of this has been 
anticipated under the head of Visible Deity and elsewhei'e ; as this 
treatise is so short, one may reasonably expect every reader to take it 
in regular course. For additional considerations : the Benevolent 
Maker would hardly leave his creatures to perish, without one word of 
warning or one gleam of knowledge. The question of the Bible is 
considered further on : but exclusively of written rules and dogmas, it 
was likely that Our Father should commission chosen servants of his 
own, orally to teach and admonish ; because it would be in accordance 
with man's reasonable nature, that he should best and easiest learn from 
the teaching his brethren. So then, after all lesser ambassadors had 
failed, it was to be expected that He should send the highest one of all, 
saying, " They will reverence my Son." We know that this really 
did occur by innumerable proofs, and wonderful signs posterior : and 
now, after the event, we discern it to have been anteriorly probable. 

It was also probable in another light. This world is a world of 
incarnations ; nothing has a real and potential existence, which is not 
embodied in some form. A theory is nothing ; if no personal philoso- 
pher, no sect, or school of learners, takes it up. An opinion is mere 
air ; without the multitude to give it all the force of a mighty wind. 



MAHOMETANISM. 



509 



An idea is mere spiritual light; if unclad in deeds, or in words written 
or spoken. So, also, of the Godhead : He would be like all these. He 
would pervade words spoken, as by prophets or preachers : He would 
include words written, as in the Bible: He would influence crowds with 
spirit-stirring sentiments : He would embody the theory of all things in 
one simple, philosophic form. As this material world is constituted, 
God could not reveal himself at all, excepting by the aid of matter. I 
mean ; even granting that He spiritually inspired a prophet, still the 
man was necessary : he becomes an inspired man ; not mere inspira- 
tion. So, also, of a book ; which is the written labour of inspired men. 
There is no doing without the Humanity of God, so far as this world is 
concerned, any more than His Deity can be dispensed with, regarding 
the worlds beyond worlds, and the ages of ages, and the dread for ever 
and ever. 



MAHOMETANISM. 

It seems expedient that, in one or two instances, I should attempt the 
illustration of this rule of probability in matters beyond the Bible. As 
very fair ones, take Mahometanism and Romanism. And first of the 
former. 

At the commencement of the seventh century, or a little previously to 
that era, we know that a fierce religion sprang up, promulgated by a 
false prophet. I wish briefly to show that this was antecedently to have 
been expected. 

In a moral point of view, the Christian world, torn by all manner of 
schisms, and polluted by all sorts of heresies, had earned for the human 
race, whether accepting the gospel or refusing it, some signal and exten- 
sive punishment at the hands of Him, who is the Great Retributor as 
well as the Munificent Rewarder. In a physical point of view, the 
civilized kingdoms of the earth had become stagnant, arguing that cor- 
rupt and poisonous calm which is the herald of a coming tempest. The 
heat of a true religion had cooled down into lukewarm disputations 
about nothings, scholastical and casuistic figments ; whilst at the same 
time the prevalence of peaceful doctrines had amalgamated all classes 
into a luxurious indolence. Passionate Man is not to be so satisfied ; 
and the time was fully come for the rise of some fierce spirit, who 

43* 



510 



PROBABILITIES. 



should change the tinsel theology of the crucifix for the iron religion of 
the sword : who should blow in the ears of the slumbering West the 
shrill war-blast of Eastern fervencies ; who should exchange the dull 
rewards of canonization due to penance, or an after-life voluntary- 
humiliation under pseudo-saints and angels, for the human and compre- 
hensible joys of animal appetite and military glory : who should enlist 
under his banner all the frantic zeal, all the pent-up licentiousness, all 
the heart-burning hatreds of mankind, stifled either by a positive bar- 
barism, or the incense-laden cloud of a scarcely-masked idolatry. 

Thus, and then, was likely to arise a bold and self-confiding hero, 
leaning on his own sword: a man of dark sentences, who, by judiciously 
pilfering from this quarter and from that shreds of truth to jewel his 
black vestments of error, and by openly proclaiming that Oneness of 
the object of all worship which besotted Christendom had then, from 
undue reverence to saints and martyrs, virgins and archangels, well 
nigh forgotten ; a man who, by pandering to human passions and setting 
wide as virtue's avenue the flower-tricked gates of vice; should thus, 
like Lucifer before him, in a comet-like career of victory, sweep the 
startled firmament of earth, and drag to his erratic orbit the stars of 
heaven from their courses. 

■ Mahomet ; his humble beginnings ; his iron perseverance under early 
probable checks ; his blind, yet not all unsublime, dependence on fatal- 
ity; his ruthless, yet not all undeserved, infliction of fire and sword 
upon the cowering coward race that filled the western world ; — these, 
and all whatever else besides attended his train of triumphs, and all 
whatever besides has lasted among Moors, and Arabs, and Turks, and 
Asiatics, even to this our day — constitute to a thinking mind (and it 
seems not without cause) another antecedent probability. Let the 
scoffer about Mahomet's success, and the admirer of his hotchpot Koran ; 
let him to whom it is a stumbling-block that error (if indeed, quoth he, 
it be more erroneous than what Christendom counts truth) should have 
had such free course and been glorified, while so-called Truth, pede 
daudo, has limped on even as now cautiously and ingloriously through 
the well-suspicious world; let him who thinks he sees in Mahomet's 
success an answer to the foolish argument of some, who test the truth 
of Christianity by its Gentile triumphs ; let him ponder these things. 
Reason, the God of his idolatry, might, with an archangel's ken, have 
prophesied some Mahomet's career : and, so far from such being in the 
nature of any objection to Faith, the idea thus thrown out, well-mused 



ROMANISM. 



511 



upon, will be seen to lend Faith an aid in the way of previous like- 
lihood. 

"There is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet!" How admirably 
calculated such a war-cry would be for the circumstances of the sev- 
enth century. The simple sublimity of Oneness, as opposed to school- 
theology and catholic demons : the glitter of barbaric pomp, instead of 
tame observances : the flashing scimetar of ambition to supersede the 
cross : a turban aigretted with jewels for the twisted wreath of thorns. 
As human nature is, and especially in that time was, nothing was more 
expectable (even if prophetic records had not taught it), than the rise 
and progress of that great False Prophet, whose waving crescent even 
now blights the third part of earth. 



ROMANISM. 



We all know how easy it is to prophesy after the event : but it would 
be uncandid and untrue to confound this remark with another, cousin- 
germane to it ; to wit : how easy it is to discern of any event, after it 
has happened, whether or not it were antecedently likely. When the race 
is over, and the best horse has won (or by clever jockey-management, 
the worst), how obviously could any gentleman on the turf, now in pos- 
session of particulars, have seen the event to have been so probable, 
that he would have staked all upon its issue. 

Carry out this familiar idea ; which, as human nature goes, is none 
the weaker as to illustration, because it is built upon the rule "joaru«s 
componere 7nagna." Let us sketch a line or two of that great fore- 
shadowing cartoon, the probabilities of Romanism. 

That our blessed Master, even in His state as man, beheld its evil 
characteristics looming on the future, seems likely not alone from both 
His human keenness and His divine omniscience, but from here and 
there a hint dropped in his biography. Why should He, on several 
occasions, have seemed, I will say with some apparent sharpness, to 
have rebuked His virgin mother. — " Woman, what have I to do with 
thee ?" — " Who are my mother and my brethren ?" — " Yea — More 
blessed than the womb which bare me, and the paps that I have sucked, 
is the humblest of my true disciples." Let no one misunderstand me : 
full well 1 know the just explanations which palliate such passages; 



512 PROBABILITIES. 

and the love stronger than death which beat in that Filial heart. But, 
take the phrases as they stand ; and do they not in reason constitute 
some warning and some prophecy that men should idolize the mother? 
Nothing, in fact, was more likely than that a just human reverence to 
the most favoured among women should have increased into her admiring 
worship : until the humble and holy Mary, with the sword of human 
anguish at her heart, should become exaggerated and idealized into 
Mother of God — instead of Jesus's human matrix. Queen of heaven, 
instead of a ransomed soul herself, the joy of angels — in lieu of their 
lowly fellow-worshipper, and the Rapture of the blessed — thus dethroning 
the Almighty. 

Take a second instance : why should Peter, the most loving, most 
generous, most devoted of them all, have been singled out from among 
the twelve — with a " Get thee behind me, Satan ?" — it really had a harsh 
appearance ; if it were not that, prophetically speaking, and not person- 
ally, he was set in the same category with Judas, the "one who was a 
devil." I know the glosses, and the contexts, and the whole amount of 
it. Folios have been written, and may be written again, to disprove 
the text ; but the more words, the less sense : it stands, a record graven 
in the Rock ; that same Petra, whereon, as firm and faithful found, our 
Lord Jesus built his early Church : it stands, a mark indelibly burnt 
into that hand, to whom were intrusted, not more specially than to any 
other of the saintly sent, the keys of the kingdom of heaven : it stands, 
along with the same Peter's deep and terrible apostacy, a living witness 
against some future Church, who should set up this same Peter as the 
Jupiter of their Pantheon: who should positively be idolizing now an 
image christened Peter, which did duty two thousand years ago as a 
statue of Libyan Jove ! But even this glaring compromise was a mat- 
ter probable, with the data of human ambitions, and a rotten Christianity. 

Examples such as these might well be multiplied : bear with a word 
or two more, remembering always that the half is not said which might 
be said in proof; nor in answering the heap of frivolous objections. 

Why, unless relics and pseudo-sacred clothes were to be prophetically 
humbled into their own mere dust and nothing-worthiness, why should 
the rude Roman soldiery have been suffered to cast lots for that vestment, 
which, if ever spiritual holiness could have been infused into mere mat- 
ter, must indeed have remained a relic worthy of undoubted worship ? 
It was warm with the Animal heat of the Man inhabited by God : it 
was half worn out in the service of His humble travels, and had even, 



ROMANISM. 513 

on many occasions, been the road by which virtue had gone out: not 
of it, but of Him, What ! was this wonderful robe to work no mira- 
cles? was it not to be regarded as a sort of outpost of the being who 
was Human-God? Had it no essential sacredness, no noli-me-tangere 
quality of shining away the gambler's covetous glance, of withering 
his rude and venturous hand, or of poisoning, like some Nessus' shirt, 
the lewd ruffian who might soon thereafter wear it? Not in the least. 
This woven web, to which a corrupted state of feeling on religion would 
have raised cathedrals as its palaces, with singing men and singing 
women, and singing eunuchs too, to celebrate its virtues ; this coarse 
cloth of some poor weaver's, working down by the sea of Galilee or in 
some lane of Zion, was still to remain, and be a mere unglorified, eco- 
nomical, useful garment. Far from testifying to its own internal might- 
iness, it probably was soon sold by the fortunate Roman die-thrower to 
a second-hand shop of the Jewish metropolis ; and so descended from 
beggar to beggar till it was clean worn out. We never hear that, how- 
ever easy of access so inestimable relic might then have been consid- 
ered, any one of the numerous disciples, in the fervour of their earliest 
zeal, threw away one thought for its redemption. Is it not strange that 
no St. Helena was at hand to conserve such a desirable invention ? 
Why is there no St. Vestment to keep in countenance a St. Sepulchre 
and a St. Cross? The poor cloth, in primitive times, really was despised. 
We know well enough what happened afterwards about handkerchiefs 
imbued with miraculous properties from holy Paul's body for the nonce : 
but this is an inferior question, and the matter was temporary; the 
superior case is proved, and besides the rule omne majus coniinet in se 
minus there are differences quite intelligible between the cases, where- 
about our time would be less profitably employed than in passing on and 
leaving them unquestioned. Suffice it to say, that "God worked those 
special miracles," and not the unconscious "handkerchiefs or aprons." 
"Te Deum laudamus!" is Protestantism's cry ; "Sudaria laudemus! " 
would swell the Papal choirs. 

Let such considerations as these then are in sample serve to show 
how evidently one might prove from anterior circumstances, (and the 
canon of Scripture is an anterior circumstance,) the probability of the 
rise and progress of the Roman heresies. And if any one should ask, 
how was such a system more likely to arise under a Gentile rather than 
a Jewish theocracy? why was a St. Paul, or a St. Peter, or a St. Dun- 
stan, or a St. Gengulphus, more previously expectable than a St. Abra- 
Hh 



514 PROBABILITIES. 

ham, a St. David, a St. Elisha, or a St. Gehazi? I answer, from the 
idea of idolatry, so adapted to the Gentile mind, and so abhorrent from 
the Jewish. Martyred Abel, however well respected, has never reached 
the honours of a niche beside the altar. Jephtha's daughter, for all her 
mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other than 
a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times, 
the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in 
gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, 
St. Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung 
about the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, 
that wretched and insensate being, calling himself rational and godly, 
who had ventured to solicit the good services of Isaiah as his intercessor, 
or to plead the merits of St. Ezekiel as the make-weight for his sins? 

It was just this, and reasonably to have been expected ; for when the 
Jew brought in his religion, he demolished every false god, broke their 
images, slew their priests, and burnt their groves with fire. But, when 
a worldly Christianity came to be in vogue, when emperors adorned their 
banners with the cross, and the poor fishermen of Galilee, (in their 
portly representatives,) came to be encrusted with gems, and rustling 
with seric silk ; then was made that fatal compromise ; then it was 
likely to have been made, which has lasted even until now : a compro- 
mise which, newly baptizing the damned idols of the heathen, keeps 
yet St. Bacchus and St. Venus, St. Mars and St. Apollo, perched in 
sobered robes upon the so-called Christian altar ; which yet pays divine 
honours to an ancyle or a rusty nail ; to the black stones at Delphi, or the 
gold-shrined bones at Aix ; which yet sanctifies the chickens of the cap- 
itol, or the cock that startled Peter ; which yet lets a wealthy sinner, by 
his gold, bribe the winking Pythoness, or buy dispensing clauses from 
"the Lord our God, the Pope." 

There is yet a swarm of other notions pressing on the mind, which 
tend to prove that Popery might have been anticipated. Take this view. 
The religion of Christ is holy, self-denying ; not of this world's praise, 
and ending with the terrible sanction of eternity for good or evil : it sets 
up God alone supreme, and cuts down creature-merit to a point perpet- 
ually diminishing ; for the longer he does well, the more he owes to the 
grace which enabled him to do it. 

Now, man's nature is, as we know, diametrically opposite to all this : 
and unable to escape from the conviction of Christian truth in some 
sense, he would bend his shrewd invention to the attempt of warping 



ROMANISM. 515 

that stern truth to shapes more consistent with his idiosyncrasies. A 
religious plan might be expected, which, in lieu of a difficult, holy spir- 
ituality, should exact easy, mere observances ; to say a thousand Paters 
with the tongue, instead of one "Our Father," from the heart; to exact 
genuflections by the score, but not a single prostration of the spirit ; to 
write the cross in water on the forehead often-times, but never once to 
bear its mystic weight upon the shoulder. In spite of self-denial, clev- 
erly kept in sight by means of eggs, and pulse, and hair-cloth, to pam- 
per the deluded flesh with many a carnal holiday ; in contravention of 
a kingdom not of this world, boldly to usurp the temporal dominion of 
it all : instead of the overwhelming incomprehensibility of an eternal 
doom, to comfort the worst with false assurance of a purgatory longer 
or shorter ; that after all, vice may be burnt out ; and who knows but 
that gold, buying up the prayers and superfluous righteousness of others, 
may not make the fiery ordeal an easy one? In lieu of a God brought 
near to his creatures, infinite purity in contact with the grossest sin, as 
the good Physician loveth ; how sage it seemed to stock the immeasura- 
ble distance with intermediate numia, cycle on epicycle, arc on arc, 
priest and bishop and pope, and martyr, and virgin, and saint, and 
angel, all in their stations, at due interval soliciting God to be (as if 
His blessed Majesty were not so of Himself!) the sinner's friend. How 
comfortable this to man's sweet estimation of his own petty penances ; 
how glorifying to those "filthy rags," his so-called righteousness: how 
apt to build up the hierarchist power; how seemingly analogous with 
man's experience here, where clerks lay the case before commission, 
ers, and commissioners before the government, and the government 
before the sovereign. 

All this was entirely expectable : and I can conceive that a deep 
Reasoner among the first apostles, even without such supernal light as 
"the Spirit speaking expressly," might have so calculated on the proba- 
bilities to come, as to have written, long ago, words akin to these : " In 
the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seduc- 
tive doctrines, and fanciful notions about intermediate deities, (iai/^oviuy,) 
perverting truth by hypocritical departures from it, searing conscience 
against its own cravings after spiritual holiness, forbidding marriage, 
(to invent another virtue,) and commanding abstinence from God's good 
gifts, as a means of building up a creature-merit by voluntary humilia- 
tion." At the likelihood that such "profane and old wives' fables" 
should thereafter have arisen, might Paul without a miracle have possi- 
bly arrived. 



516 PROBABILITIES. 

Yel again: take another view. The Religion of Christ, though 
intended to be universal in some better era of this groaning earth, was, 
until that era cometh, meant and contrived for any thing rather than a 
Catholicity. True, the Church is so far Catholic that it numbers of its 
blessed company men of every clime and every age, from righteous 
Abel down to the last dear babe christened yester-morning ; true, the 
commission is "to all nations, teaching them:" but, what mean the 
simultaneous and easily reconciled expressions — come out from among 
them, little flock, gathered out of the Gentiles, a peculiar people, a 
church militant, and not triumphant, here on earth? Thus shortly of a 
word much misinterpreted : let us now see what the Romanist does, 
what, (on human principles,) he would be probable to do, with this dis- 
criminating religion. He, chiefly for temporal gains, would make it as 
expansive as possible : there should be room at that table for every 
guest, whether wedding-garmented or not ; there would be sauces in that 
poisonous feast, fitted to every palate. For the cold, ascetical mind, a 
cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling 
them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his favoured 
worshipper ; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there would be 
a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted by a not 
unsympathizing father ; for the pure girl, blighted in her heart's first 
love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful refuge, that calm 
and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery ; a place, for all 
its calmness, and its music, and its gentle reputations, soon to be aBhorred 
of that poor child as a living tomb, the extinguisher of all life's aims, 
all its duties, uses and delights : for the bandit, a tythe of the traveller's 
gold would avail to pay away the murder, and earn for him a heap of 
merits kept within the cash-box : the educated, high-born and finely, 
moulded mind might be well amused with architecture, painting, carving, 
sweet odours, and the most wondrous music that has ever cheated man, 
even while he offers up his easy adorations, and departs, equally compla- 
cent at the choral remedies as at the priestly absolution; while, for 
those good few, the truly pious and enlightened children of Rome, who 
mourn the corruptions of their church, and explain away, with trem- 
bling tongue, her obvious erroi's and idolatries, for these the wily scheme, 
so probable, devised an undoubted mass of truth to be left among tne 
rubbish. True doctrines, justly held by true martyrs and true saints, 
holy men of God who have died in that communion ; ordinances and 
an existence which creep up, (heedless of corruption though,) step by 



ROMANISM. 517 

step, through past antiquity, to the very feet of the Founder ; keen cas- 
uists, competent to prove any point of conscience or objection, and that 
indisputably, for they climax all by the high authority of Popes and 
councils that cannot be deceived : pious treatises and manuals, verily of 
flaming heat, for they mingle the yearnings of a constrained celibacy 
with the fervencies of worship and the cravings after God. Yos, there 
is meat here for every human mouth ; only that, alas for men ! the meat 
is that which perisheth, and not endureth unto everlasting life. Rome, 
thou wert sagely schemed ; and if Lucifer devised thee not for the 
various appetencies of poor, deceivable, Catholic Man, verily it were 
pity, for thou art worthy of his handiwork. All things to all men, in 
any sense but the right, signifies nothing to anybody : in the sense of 
falsehoods, take the former for thy motto; in that of single truth, in its 
intensity, the latter. 

Let not then the accident — the probable accident — of the Italian super- 
stition place any hindrance in the way of one whose mind is all at sea 
because of its existence. What, O man with a soul, is all the world 
else to thee ? Christianity, whatever be its broad way of pretences, is 
but in reality a narrow path: be satisfied with the day of small things, 
stagger not at the inconsistencies, conflicting words, and hateful strife^ 
of those who say they are Christians, but "are not, but are of the syna 
gogue of Satan." Judge truth, neither by her foes nor by her friends 
but by herself. There was one who said (and I never heard that any 
writer, from Julian to Hobbes, ever disputed his human truth or wisdom) 
" Needs must that offences come ; but wo be to that man by whom the 
offence cometh. If they come, be not shaken in faith : lo, I have told 
you before. And if others fall away, or do ought else than my bidding, 
what is that to thee? follow thou ME." 



THE BIBLE. 

Whilst I attempt to show, as now I desire to do, that the Bible should 
be just the book it is, from considerations of anterior probability, 1 must 
expand the subject a little; dividing it, first, into the likelihood of a 
revelation at all; and secondly, into that of its expectable form and 
character. 

The first likelihood has its birth in the just Benevolence of our hea- 
venly Father, who without dispute never leaves his rational creaturee 

44 



518 PROBABILITIES. 

unaided by some sort of guiding light, some manifestation of himself so 
needful to their happiness, some sure word of consolation in sorrow, or 
of brighter hope in persecution. That it must have been thus an d 
priori probability, has been all along proved by the innumerable pre- 
tences of the kind so constant up and down the world : no nation ever 
existed in any age or country, whose seers and wise men of whatever 
name have not been believed to hold commerce with the Godhead. We 
may judge from this, how probable it must ever have been held. The 
Sages of old Greece were sure of it from reason : and not less sure from 
accepted superstition those who reverenced the Brahmin, or the priest 
of Heliopolis, or the medicine-man among the Rocky Mountains, or the 
Llama of old Mexico. I know that our ignorance of some among the 
most brutalized species of mankind, as the Bushmen in Caffraria, and 
the tribes of New South Wales, has failed to find among their rites any 
thing akin to religion: but what may we not yet have to learn of good 
even about such poor outcasts ? how shall we prove this negative ? For 
aught we know, their superstitions at the heart may be as deep and as 
deceitful as in others; and, even on the contrary side, the exception 
proves the rule : the rule that every people concluded a revelation so 
likely, that they have one and all contrived it for themselves. 

Thus shortly of the first : and now, secondly, how should God reveal 
himself to men ? In such times as those when the world was yet young, 
and the Church concentrated in a family or an individual, it would 
probably be by an immediate oral teaching ; the Lord would speak with 
Adam ; He would walk with Enoch ; He would, in some pure ethereal 
garb, talk with Abraham, as friend to friend. And thereafter, as men 
grew, and worshippers were multiplied. He would give some favoured 
servant a commission to be His ambassador: He would say to an Ezekiel, 
" Go unto the house of Israel, and speak my words to them :" He would 
bid a Jeremiah "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the 
words that I have spoken to thee :" He would give Daniel a deep vision, 
not to be interpreted for ages, "Shut up the words, and seal the book 
even to the time of the end :" He would make Moses grave His precepts 
in the rock, and Job record his trials with a pen of iron. For a family, 
the Beatic Vision was enough : for a congregated nation, as once at 
Sinai, oral proclamations : for one generation or two around the world, 
the zeal and eloquence of some great "multitude of preachers:" but, 
indubitably, if God willed to bless the universal race, and drop the honey 
of his words distilling down the hour-glass of Time from generation to 



THE BIBLE. 5I9 

generation even to the latter days, there was no plan more probable, 
none more feasible, than the pen of a ready writer. 

Further : and which concerns our argument : what were likely to be 
the characteristic marks of such a revelation? Exclusively of a per- 
vading holiness, and wisdom, and sublimity, which could not be dis- 
pensed with, and in some sort should be worthy of the God ; there would 
be, it was probable, frequent evidences of man's infirmity, corrupting 
all he toucheth. The Almighty works no miracles for little cause : 
one miracle alone need be current throughout Scripture : to wit, that 
which preserves it clean and safe from every perilous error. But, in 
the succession of a thousand scribes each copying from the other, needs 
must that the tired hand and misty eye would occasionally misplace a 
letter : this was no nodus worthy of a God's descent to dissipate by 
miracle. 

Again : the original prophets themselves were men of various char- 
acters and times and tribes. God addresses men through their reason ; 
he bound not down a seer " with bit and bridle, like the horse that has 
no understanding" — but spoke as to a rational being — "What seesl 
thou?" "Hear my words;" — "Give ear unto my speech." Was it not 
then likely that the previous mode of thought and providential education 
in each holy man of God should mingle irresistibly with his inspired 
teaching? Should not the herdsman of Tehoa plead in pastoral phrase, 
and the royal son of Amoz denounce with strong authority ? Should not 
David whilst a shepherd praise God among his flocks, and when a king, 
cry "Give the King thy judgments?" The Bible is full of this human 
individuality ; and nothing could be thought as humanly more probable : 
but we must, with this diversity, connect the other probability also, that 
which should show the work to be divine ; which would prove (as is 
literally the case) that, in spite of all such natural variety, all such 
unbiassed freedom both of thought and speech, there pervades the whole 
mass a oneness, a marvellous consistency, which would be likely to have 
been designed by God, though little to have been dreamt by man. 

Once more on this full topic. Difficulties in Scripture were expect- 
able for many reasons ; I can only touch a few. Man is rational as he 
is responsible: God speaks to his mind and moral powers: and the 
mind rejoices, and moralities grow strong in conquest of the difficult and 
search for the mysterious. The muscles of the spiritual athlete pant for 
such exertion ; and without it, they would dwindle into trepid imbecility. 
Curious man, courageous man, enterprising, shrewd, and vigourous 



520 PROBABILITIES. 

man, yet has a constant enemy to dread in his own indolence : now, a 
lion in the path will wake up Sloth himself: and the very difficulties of 
religion engender perseverance. 

Additionally : I think there is somewhat in the consideration, that, if 
all revealed truth had been utterly simple and easy, it would have 
needed no human interpreter ; no enlightened class of men, who, accord- 
ing to the spirit of their times, and the occasions of their teaching, 
might "in season and out of season preach the word, reprove, rebuke, 
exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrine." I think there existed an 
anterior probability that Scripture should be as it is, often-times difficult, 
obscure, and requiring the aid of many wise to its elucidation ; because, 
without such characteristic, those many wise and good would nevei 
have been called for. Suppose all truth revealed as clearly and indis 
putably to the meanest intellect as a sum in addition is, where were the 
need or use of that noble Christian company who are every where man''- 
almoners for charity, and God's ambassadors for peace? 

A word or two more, and I have done. The Bible would, as it seem'^ 
to me probable, be a sort of double book ; for the righteous, and for thp 
wicked : to one class, a decoy, baited to allure all sorts of generous dis 
positions : to the other, a trap, set to catch all kinds of evil inclinations 
In these two senses, it would address the whole family man : and every 
one should find in it something to his liking. Purity should there per 
ceive green pastures and still waters, and a tender Shepherd for its inno 
cent steps : and carnal appetite should here and there discover some 
darker spot, which the honesty of heaven had filled with memories of its 
chiefest servants' sins; some record of adultery or murder wherewith to 
feast his maw for condemnation. While the good man should find in it 
meat divine for every earthly need, the sneerer should proclaim it the 
very easiest manual for his jests and lewd profanities. The unlettered 
' should not lack humble, nay vulgar, images and words, to keep himself 
in countenance : neither should the learned look in vain for reasonings ; 
the poet for sublimities ; the curious mind for mystery ; nor the sorrow- 
ing heart for prayer. I do discern, in that great book, a wondrous 
adaptability to minds of every calibre : and it is just what might ante- 
cedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at many 
different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a volinne 
meant for every age, and nation, and country, and tongue, and people ; 
of a volume which, as a two-edged sword, wounds the good man's heart 
with deep conviction, and cuts down "the hoary head of him who goeth 
on still in his wickedness." 



HEAVEN AND HELL. 



521 



On the whole, respecting faults, or incongruities, or objectionable 
parts in Scripture, however to have been expected, we must recollect 
that the more they are viewed, the more the blemishes fade, and are 
altered into beauties. 

A little child had picked up an old stone, defaced with time-stains : 
the child said the stone was dirty, covered with blotches and all colours : 
but his father brings a microscope, and shows to his astonished glance 
that what the child thought dirt, is a forest of beautiful lichens, fruited 
mosses, and strange lilliputian plants with shapely animalcules hiding in 
the leaves, and rejoicing in their tiny shadow. Every blemish, justly 
seen, had turned to be a beauty : and Nature's works are vindicated 
good, even as the Word of Grace is wise. 



HEAVEN AND HEII. 

Probably enough, the light which I expect to throw upon this import- 
ant subject will, upon a cursory criticism, be judged fanciful, erroneous, 
and absurd; in parts, quite open to riducule, and in all liable to the 
objection of being wise, or foolish, beyond what is written. . Neverthe- 
less, and as it seems to me of no small consequence to reach something 
more definite on the subject than the Anywhere or Nowhere of common 
apprehensions, I judge it not amiss to put out a few thoughts, fancies, 
if you will, but not unreasonable fancies, on the localities and other 
characteristics of what we call heaven and hell : in fact, I wish to show 
their probable realities with somewhat approaching to distinctness. It 
is manifest that these places must be somewhere ; for, more especially of 
the blest estate, whither did Enoch, and Elijah, and our risen Lord 
ascend to? what became of these glorified humanities when "the chariot 
of fire carried up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven ;" and when " He 
was taken up, and a cloud received him?"' Those happy mortals did 
not waste away to intangible spiritualities, as they rose above the world ; 
their bodies were not melted as they broke the bonds of gravitation, and 
pierced earth's swathing atmosphere : they went up somewhither ; the 
question is where they went to. It is a question of great interest to us ; 
however, among those matters which are rather curious than conse- 
quential ; for in our own case, as we know, we that are redeemed are 
to be caught up, together with other blessed creatures, "in the clouds, to 

44* 



522 PROBABILITIES. 

meet our coming Saviour in the air, and thereafter to be ever with the 
Lord." I wish to show this to be expected as in our case, and expect- 
able previously to it. 

We have, in the book of" Job, a peep at some place of congregation : 
some one, as it is likely, of the mighty globes in space, set apart as 
God's especial temple. Why not? they all are worlds; and the likeli- 
hood being in favour of overbalancing good, rather than of preponderating 
evil from considerations that affect God's attributes and the happiness of 
his creatures, it is probable that the great majority of these worlds are 
unfallen mansions of the blessed. Perhaps each will be a kingdom for 
one of earth's redeemed, and if so, there will at last be found fulfilled 
that prevailing superstition of our race, that each man has his star : 
without insisting upon this, we may reflect that there is no one universal 
opinion which has not its foundation in truth. Tradition may well have 
dropped the thought from Adam downwards, that the stars may some 
day be our thrones. We know their several vastness, and can guess 
their glory : verily a mighty meed for miserable services on earth, to 
find a just ambition gladdened with the rule of spheres, to which Terra 
is a point ; while that same ambition is sanctified and legalized by ruling 
as vicegerent of Jehovah. 

Is this unlikely, or unworthy of our high vocation, our immortality, 
and nearness unto, nay communion with God ? The idea is only sug- 
gested : let a man muse at midnight, and look up at the heavens hanging 
over all ; let him see, with Rosse and Herschell, that, multiply power 
as you will, unexhausted still and inexhaustible appear the myriads of 
worlds unknown. Yea, there is space enow for infinite reward ; yea, 
let every grain of sand on every shore be gathered, and more innumer- 
able yet appear that galaxy of spheres. Let us think that night looks 
down upon us here, with the million eyes of heaven. And for some 
focus of them all, some spot where God himself enthroned receives the 
homao-e of all crowns, and the worship of all creature service, what is 
there unreasonable in suggesting for a place some such an one as is 
instanced below? 

I have just cut the following paragraph out of a newspaper: Is 
this the ridiculous tripping up the sublime? I think otherwise: it is 
honest to use plain terms. I speak as unto wise men — ^judge ye what I 
say. With respect to the fact of information, it may or it may not be 
true ; but even if untrue, the idea is substantially the same, and I cannot 
help supposing that with angels and archangels and the whole company 



HEAVEN AND HELL. 523 

of heaven, such bodily saints as Enoch is, (and similar to him all risen, 
holy men will be,) meet for happy sabbaths in some glorious orb akin 
or superior to the following : 

" A CENTRAL Sun. — Dr. Madier, the Professor of Astronomy at Dorpat, 
has published the results of the researches pursued by him uninterrupt- 
edly during the last sixty years, upon the movements of the so-called 
fixed stars. These more particularly relate to the star Alcyone, (dis- 
covered by him,) the brightest of the seven bright stars of the group 
of the Pleiades. This star he states to be the central sun of all the 
systems of stars known to us. He gives its distance from the bounda- 
ries of our system at thirty-four million times the distance of the sun 
from our earth, a distance which it takes five hundred and thirty-seven 
years for light to traverse. Our sun takes one hundred and eighty -two 
million years to accomplish its course round this central body, whose 
mass is one hundred and seventeen million times larger than the sun." 

One hundred and seventeen million times larger than the Sun ! itself, 
for all its vastness, not more than half one million times bigger than this 
earth. To some such globe we may let our fancies float, and anchor 
there our yearnings after heaven. It is a glorious thought, such as 
imagination loves; and a probable thought, that commends itself to rea- 
son. Behold the great eye of all our guessed creation, the focus of its 
brightness, and the fountain of its peace. 

A topic far less pleasant, but alike of interest to us poor men, is the 
probable home of evil ; and here I may be laughed at — laugh, but listen, 
and if, listening, some reason meets thine ear, laugh at least no longer. 

We know that, for spirit's misery as for spirit's happiness, there is no 
need of place: "no matter where, for I am still the same," said one 
most miserable being. More — in the case of mere spirits, there is no 
need for any apparatus of torments, or fires, or other fearful things. 
But, when spirit is married to matter, the case is altered ; needs must a 
place to prison the matter, and a corporal punishment to vex it. 

Nothing is unlikely here ; excepting — will a man urge? — the dread 
duration of such hell. This is a parenthesis ; but it shall not be avoided, 
for the import of that question is deep, and should be answered clearly. 
A man, a body and soul inmixt, body risen incorruptible, and soul rested 
from its deeds, must exist for ever. I touch not here the proofs — assume 
it. Now, if he lives for ever, and deliberately chooses evil, his will 
consenting as well as his infirmity, and conscience seared by persisted 
disobedience, what course can such a wilful, rational, responsible being 



524 PROBABILITIES. 

pursue than one perpetually erratic 1 How should it not be that he gets 
worse and worse in morals, and more and more miserable in fact? and 
when to this we add, that such wretched creatures are to herd together, 
continually flying further away from the only source of Happiness and 
Good ; and to this, that they have earned by sin, remorses and regrets, 
and positive inflictions; how probable seems a hell, the sinner's doom 
eternal. The apt mathematical analogy of lines thrown out of parallel, 
helps this for illustration : for ever and for ever they are stretching more 
remote, and infinity itself cannot reunite their travel. 

This, then, as a passing word ; a sad one. Honest thinker, do not 
scorn it, for thine own soul's sake. "Now is the time of grace, now is 
the day of salvation." To return. A place of punishment exists ; to 
what quarter shall we look for its anterior probability ? I think there 
is a likelihood very near us. There may be one, possibly, beneath us, 
in the bowels of this fiery-bursting earth ; whither went Korah and his 
company? This idea is not without its arguments, just analogies, and 
scriptural hints. But my judgment inclines towards another. This 
trial-world, we know, is to be purified and restored, and made a new 
earth : it was even to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I 
like not to imagine it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus : At 
the birth of this same world, there was struck off" from its burning mass 
at a tangent, a mournful satellite, to be the home of its immortal evil ; 
the convict shore for exiled sin and misery ; a satellite of strange differ 
ences, as guessed by Virgil in his musings upon Tartarus, where haH 
the orb is, from natural necessities, blistered up by constant heats, tlie 
other half frozen by perennial cold. A land of caverns, and volcanoes, 
miles deep, miles high; with no water, no perceptible air: imagine 
such a dreadful world, with neither air nor water! incapable of feeding 
life like ours, but competent to be a place where undying wretchedness 
may struggle for ever. A melancholy orb, the queen of night, chief 
nucleus of all the dark idolatries of earth; the Moon, Isis, Hecate, 
Ashtaroth, Diana of the Ephesians ! 

This expression of a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy 
chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason 
Why should not the case be so? Why should not Earth's own satellite, 
void, as yet, be on the resurrection of all flesh, the raft whereon to float 
away Earth's evil? Read of it astronomically; think of it as connected 
with idols ; regard it as the ruler of earth's night ; consider that the 
place of a Gehenna must be somewhere ; and what is there in my fancy 



AN OFFER. 525 

quite improbable ? I do not dogmatize as that the fact is so, but only 
suggest a definite place at least as likely as any other hitherto sug- 
gested. Think how that awful, melancholy eye looks down on deeds 
of darknesss ! how many midnight crimes, murders, thefts, adulteries, 
and witchcrafts, that would have shrunk into nonentity from open, honest 
day, have paled the conscious Moon ! Add to all this, it is the only 
world, besides our own, whereof astronomers can tell us. It is fallen. 



AN OFFER. 

Nothing were easier than to have made this book a long one ; but 
that was not the writer's object: as well because of the musty Greek 
proverb about long books; which in every time and country are sure 
never to be read through by one in a thousand ; as because it is always 
wiser to suggest than to exhaust a topic ; which may be as " a fruit- 
tree yielding fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself." The writer 
then intended only to touch upon a few salient points, and not to discuss 
every question, however they might crowd upon his mind : time and 
space alike with mental capabilities forbade an effort so gigantic : added 
to which, such a course seemed to be unnecessary, as the rule of prob- 
ability, thus illustrated, might be applied by others in every similar 
instance. Still, as the errand of this book is usefulness, and its author's 
hope is, under Heaven, to do good, one personal hint shall here be 
thrown upon the highway. Without arrogating to myself the wisdom 
or the knowledge to solve one in twenty of the doubts possible to be pro- 
pounded ; without also designing even to attempt such solutions, unless 
well assured of the genuine anxiety of the doubter; and preliminarizing 
the consideration, that a fitting diffidence in the advocate's own powers 
is no reason why he should not make wide efforts in his holy cause ; 
that, such reasonable essays to do good have no sort of brotherhood with 
a fanatical Spiritual Quixotism ; and that, to my own apprehensions, the 
doubts of a rationalizing mind are in the nature of honourable foes, to be 
treated with delicacy, reverence, and kindness, rather than with a cold 
distance and an ill-concealed contempt ; preliminarizing, lastly, the 
thought — " Who is sufficient for these things ?" — I nevertheless thus 
offer, according to the grace and power given to me, my best but humble 
efforts so far to dissipate the doubts of some respecting any scriptural 



526 PROBABILITIES. 

fact, as may lie within the province of showing or attempting to show 
its previous crediWlity. This is not a challenge to the curious casuist 
or the sneering infidel ; but an invitation to the honest mind harassed by 
unanswered queries : no gauntlet thrown down, but a brother's hand 
stretched out. Such questions, if put to the writer, through his pub- 
lisher by letter, may find their reply in a future edition: supposing, that 
is to say, that they deserve an answer, whether as regards their own 
merits or the temper of the mind who doubts ; and supposing also that 
the writer has the power and means to answer them discreetly. It is only 
a fair rule of philanthropy (and that without arrogating any unusual 
"strength") to "bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please our- 
selves :" and nothing would to me give greater happiness than to be 
able, as I am willing, to remove any difficulties lying in the track of 
Faith before a generous mind. I hang out no glistening holly-bush 
a-flame with its ostentatious berries as promising good wine ; but rather 
over my portal is the humbler and hospitable mistletoe, assuring every 
wearied pilgrim in the way, that though scanty be the fare, he shall 
find a hearty welcome. 



CONCLUSION. 



1 HAVE thus endeavoured (with solicited help of Heaven) to place 
before the world anew a f^ew old truths : truths inestimably precious. 
Remember, they cannot have lost by any such advocacy as is contained 
in the idea of their being shown antecedently probable ; for this idea 
aflfects not at all the fact of their existence ; the thing is ; whether prob- 
able or not; there is, in esse, an ornithorhyncus; its posse is drowned 
in esse : there exists no doubt of it : evidence, whether of senses physical, 
or of considerations moral, puts the circumstance beyond the sphere of 
disputation. But such truths as we have spoken of do, nevertheless, 
o-ain something as to — not their merits, these are all their own substan- 
tially; nor their positive proofs, these are adjectives properly attendant 
on them, but as to — their acceptability among the incredulous of men ; 
they gain, I say, even by such poor pleading as mine, from being shown 
anteriorly probable. Take an illustration in the case of that strange 
and anomalous creature mentioned just above. Its habitat is in a land 
where plums grow with the stones outside, where aboriginal dogs have 



CONCLUSION. 527 

never been heard to bark, where birds are found covered with hair, and 
where mammals jump about like frogs! If these are shown to be 
literal facts, the mind is thereby well prepared for any animal mon- 
strosity : and it staggers not in unbelief (on evidence of honest travellers) 
even when informed of a creature with a duck's bill and a beaver's 
body : it really amounted in Australia to an antecedent probability. 

Carry this out to matters not a quarter so incredible, ye thinkers, ye 
free-thinkers ; neither be abashed at being named as thinking freely : 
were not those Bereans more noble in that they searched to see ? For 
my humble part, I do commend you for it : treacherous is the hand that 
roots up the inalienable right of private judgment ; the foundation-stone 
of Protestantism, the great prerogative of reason, the key-note of con- 
science, the sole vindex of a man's responsibility : evil and false is the 
so-called reverential wisdom which lays down in place of the truth that 
each man's conscience is a law unto himself, the tyranny of other men's 
authority. Cheap and easy and perilled is the faith, which clings to the 
skirt of others; which leans upon the broken staff of priestcraft, until 
those poisoned splinters pierce the hand. 

Prove all things; holding fast that which is good: good to thine own 
reasonable conscience, if unwarped by casuistries, and unblinded by 
licentiousness. Prove all things, if you can, "from the egg to the 
apple:" he is a poor builder of his creed, who takes one brick on credit. 
Be able, as you can be, (if only you are willing so far to be wisely incon- 
sistent, as to bend the stubborn knee betimes, and though with feeble 
glance to look to heaven, and though with stammering tongue to pray 
for aid,) be able, as it is thy right, O man of God— to give a Reason for 
the faith that is in thee. 



THE END. 



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